The Medplastic 2020 contest (the initiative we created in 2018 to protect the Mediterranean Sea) has begun, and the plastic hunters were not long in coming!
The first photos of your catches are beginning, both on the Journal of Sailing’s Instagram profile and on the Medplastic Team Facebook group. Every time you pick up a garbage in the sea, take a “selfie” and send it to us!
We will reward the three best plastic hunters with fantastic prizes provided by our partner Navico: prize vouchers to spend on tools and cartography with which you can better equip your boat! Before reviewing photos and videos of plastic hunters, let’s summarize how you can send us photos or videos:
- Posting them on the Medplastic Team Facebook group.
- To our Instagram inbox (@journalofavela)
- Posting them on your Instagram profile with the hashtag #medplastic2020
We would like to remind you that this year the contest will be enriched with a “good news” section: send us photos of your sightings of cetaceans, fish, seabirds, jellyfish, animals. Again, we will publish them all and award prizes to the best ones!
CAPTAIN TIMOTHY AND HIS CREW
We start by congratulating one of the most active plastic hunters of recent summers: Timothy Lucie-Smith, who, with his boat and crew equipped with a net, doesn’t let a piece of trash slip through his fingers. These are his catches to date between the Aeolian Islands, the Amalfi Coast and the Calabrian beach of Vibo Marina. Tireless Timothy!
THE HUNTRESS ERIONA: “STRONGER THAN BEFORE”
Another very active plastic hunter is Eriona Skipperina. She writes us from Mola di Bari (Ba), “I’m back stronger than before. And this time collected in turn with husband (who specializes in glass collection).”
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND…
The photo Giacomo Greci sent us on Instagram is more than explanatory: “What goes around comes around…”
PLASTIC SOUP
The folks at Surfrider Genova shared on the Medplastic Team group this video.
https://www.facebook.com/SurfriderGenova/videos/953614271754123
“This is the plastic soup we found in the sea during our last SUP ride,” they write. “Our sea is getting worse and worse in terms of plastic in the sea, and we would like to emphasize that BIOPLASTICS IS NOT THE SOLUTION. Among the various litter we collected was a lot of corn-based plastic. Whether plastic is made from petroleum or corn-based, it doesn’t change much when it ends up in the sea (and indeed, producing it has a higher environmental impact). THE PROBLEM IS DISPOSABLE.” And again, “As seen in the last images of the video, we concluded the tour by collecting about 200 PLASTIC PARTS, including packaging, bioplastic bags, masks, gloves, caps, bottles, etc.”
ALL HUNTING FOR CETACEANS!
Since this year’s Medplastic contest includes not only plastic hunting but also a “good news” section devoted to sightings of fish, cetaceans, jellyfish, seabirds etc, we point out a nice initiative scheduled for August 15. Operation Delphis, organized by the Rainbow Association. On the site info and registration form, free of charge, for those with boats. Starting from a large number of simultaneous and rightly apportioned observation points, the program of the operation aims to make a “panoramic snapshot” of the sea surface in order to identify and photograph visible pollution, observe, identify, count and photograph Cetaceans, observe, identify, count and photograph Jellyfish, observe and count and photograph sea turtles, and observe and photograph alien species.
THE LIBERATION OF SPIKE THE SPERM WHALE
A crew of four women, biologists from the turtle recovery center on the island of Filicudi, were sailing toward the island of Stromboli when, about six miles northeast of the island of Salina, they spotted a male sperm whale (christened Spike) about ten feet long on the surface with its tail fin completely wrapped in a fishing net.
Alerted by the women, the Lipari Coast Guard sent patrol boat CP 322 to the area, which, having verified the cetacean’s critical condition, implemented all useful procedures to secure the mammal. A team of local divers then arrived on the scene aboard a Coast Guard boat, and after an hour of hard work at a depth of about two meters, they managed to totally remove the net from the animal’s tail fin, leaving it free to move.
Once the cetacean’s release operations were over, the sperm whale was monitored by the Coast Guard in order to check for abnormal behavior and left free to rejoin three other specimens that had been waiting for him at a distance all along.
The fishing net recovered aboard the Coast Guard unit was confiscated as illegal fishing gear. Who knows what would have become of Spike without Coast Guard intervention, forced to swim with a hundred pounds of net on his fin.
It’s off to hunt! Send us photos of your plastic catches, litter, and shots of your sightings of fish, cetaceans, jellyfish, seabirds! To the Instagram inbox @giornaledellavela, or post them on your profile with the hashtag #medplastic2020, or on the Medplastic Team facebook group! We will award prizes for the most beautiful ones!
OUR PARTNER
The No Plastic 2020 contest is being held in collaboration with Navico, a brand that brings together the boat electronics brands B&G, Lowrance, Simrad, and the dedicated mapping brand C-Map. And that it will raffle off prize vouchers spendable on its entire product range.
DISCOVER ALL MEDPLASTIC-THEMED NEWS
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