SURFERS Against Sewage (SAS), The Crown Estate and World Animal Protection (WAP) are appealing for volunteers to lead community beach cleans as part of the Autumn Beach Clean Series this October, to protect UK beaches, waves and wildlife from the marine litter crisis haunting our coastlines.

The initiative aims to attract 3,500 volunteers to 150 coastal locations, including some of Pembrokeshire’s best-loved and most iconic beaches, to make this beach clean the biggest ever.

The majority of marine litter consists of plastic items such as drinks bottles, carrier bags, fishing waste and sewage-related debris. Plastics can take hundreds of years to degrade in the marine environment, haunting marine life, ecosystems and compromising the enjoyment and experiences of coastal visitors everywhere. At sea, it is estimated that a 100,000 marine mammals and a million seabirds die every year through entanglement in and ingestion of marine litter.

SAS will also be collaborating with WAP to raise the profile of the growing threat of ghost fishing gear, the term used for lost or abandoned commercial fishing gear that continues to indiscriminately catch, injure and kill fish, marine mammals, seabirds and other wildlife in our oceans.

Alarmingly, over 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear are left in oceans globally each year. That’s almost 2000 tonnes every single day.

To help combat this, Autumn Beach Clean Series volunteers will be surveying and reporting on any fishing line, netting or other ghost gear at October’s beach clean events.

SAS beach clean events are a wonderful opportunity for communities to come together to take direct action on marine litter and provide an engaging, interactive educational platform on the threat, scale and solutions to the marine litter crisis.

SAS’s Beach Clean Team are on hand to help you organise your own Autumn Beach Clean, so get in touch on beachcleans@sas.org.uk or call 01872 553 001 and become a marine litter activist today.