Pepe's Island Clean Up
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Wed 3 Jul 2019 23:57
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Pepe's Island Clean
Up
 Over breakfast we felt a cunning plan
forming. The day was bright and sunny and we knew that Pepe’s Island had a fair amount of rubbish on the beach.
The many turtle nests will hatch under the next full moon and.........well off
we went, bin liners at the ready.
 I left Bear to
deal with the beach whilst I went off around the island, bags in hand. I
found a blue rubber sheet which will make a good base sheet for our rubbish pile
back on Fouquet Island. Groups of plastic bottles huddled along the way and two
huge chunks of polystyrene boxes had me paddle back towing my loot behind me.
Bear met and relieved me and I returned to the far corner. I appeared an hour
later at the other end of the beach to see Bear busily stomping plastic water
bottles flat.
 Baby
Beez with five sacks of singleton flip flops and plastic water
bottles, a jerry can, a big polystyrene box, the rubber mat, an empty, rusting
LPG bottle, several glass bottles and a handful of medicine bottles. Somehow we
both wiggled in and set off for our beach on Fouquet.
 We decided on
an area that was shady for most of the day as we thought the bin liners may
suffer under the intense UV rays, although we had double bagged. Down went the
blue mat and the five bags from Pepe’s Island. We gathered yesterday’s pile of
fishing floats from along the beach and brought back the yacht fridge we found on the seaward side and unbelievably
the strip light bulb that was somehow still intact. The fridge became home to
the glass bottles.
 We bagged our
plastic bottle piles gathered yesterday and Bear posed with
our growing pile. Time for a cooling dip, a chat and a drink. We both
recollected the whole bottled water business. He remembers fancy restaurants in
London offering Perrier water in the distinct green bottles. I remember Evian
water hitting the supermarkets. My mum said “Who on earth will pay good money
for tap water”, who indeed...........
   Slowly we had a
small rope pile, bags and huge
bits of polystyrene and the fridge full of glass and
random metal stuff.
  During another
dip I picked on Bear’s current cap. Huh. Well he will never give up on a scruffy one
until I fell it........
 Side note:-
several days later he was still wearing this raggedy
cap.
 At low tide we headed for the seaward beach,
passing the spot where we had gathered one of our three big piles (no bin liners
yesterday) there was a hermit crab conference. Each and every one of the shells in the picture held a
chap.
  We waited as the final speech was almost finished and watched as
the chaps began to bimble
away.
  We spent ten minutes tugging at the fishing
net we attached by tangled ropes both caught in the bush and dead reef
below. Stuck fast we know to bring a sharp knife tomorrow. Hard to picture the
size of the thing even when I got Bear to pose with
it. Trust us, it was over six feet across and about two solid feet deep.
We spent the next half an hour gathering two piles over this side, too tired to
crush and bag today.
 The hard hat, OK I couldn’t resist adding a fishing float or two
to make a happy man. We show our collection (so far)
not as any sort of ‘well done us’ but to show that even this isolated paradise
has to put up with the scourge of drifting rubbish. This atoll is 1400 nmiles
from Madagascar, 1200 nmiles from Mauritius and 300 nautical miles from Gan in
The Maldives. a few days after each and every storm more rubbish drifts in. We
can understand how a fishing net float or two can run away and flip flops get
accidentally caught on a changing tide. We can see how during a shower on the
stern platform of Beez we could accidentally topple the shower gel
bottle but so many water bottles........ Ninety nine percent have their lid
neatly screwed back on. Then there is the willful stuff – a light bulb, an
ordinary household light bulb. Some say it OK to break off the metal bit and let
the bulb end drop into the sea. Mmmm not sure about that. Yes, glass is sand but
it will take hundreds of years to return to that state. So as for our happy man,
in closing and in hindsight........he should really have been made to wear a
frown perhaps even some tears.
ALL IN ALL HUGELY SATISFIED
BUT SAD AT THE SAME TIME
AMAZING HOW MUCH RUBBISH COMES TO AN UNINHABITED
ATOLL |