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Beach bummed: Staff at Bjørnøya collect nearly 400 kilograms of trash on shores near station, lots more remains

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Kristine Tofte decided to walk a bit beyond her usual spot on a beach when she came upon an now all-too-familiar story that still shocks those experiencing it for the first time: a coastline more reminiscent of an urban landfill than the pristine environmental “crown jewel” of Norway.

“I found car tires, nets, snuff boxes, food and fish boxes,” she told ABC Nyheter. “Everything you can imagine.”

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Shoes collected from the shore near the Bjørnøya Meteorological Station await bagging after being sorted. Photo by Kristine Tofte.

Tofte, an employee at the Bjørnøya Meteorological Station, joined her colleagues in collecting nearly 400 kilograms of trash along the shore last month, which was then removed by The Governor of Svalbard using its Polarsyssel vessel.

It’s just one of many beach cleanups taking place this summer as both an increasing amount of trash and awareness of the problem is prompting action by public and private entities. Beyond being unsightly, the trash is considered a major threat to marine and land wildlife which both ingests and can be trapped by items ranging from nets to microplastics.

Cleanup projects aren’t new – two groups of 12 local residents selected in a lottery by the governor will spend portions of the next couple of weeks cleaning up trash along the northernmost shores of Svalbard as part of an annual effort that began in 2001. But more are taking place in recent years and, while most are planned ahead of time, the cleanup at Bjørnøya was noteworthy for the size of the effort in a spontaneous and rapid response.

“It is amazing what is being washed up on this little island in the middle of the Arctic Ocean” an entry at the station’s official blog notes. “We have found everything from fishing gear to car tires. Lots of plastic bottles, ropes, whole and parts of boxes, toothpicks, shoes, strips, snuff boxes, styrofoam, helmets, jugs, pipes and much more.”

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Items ranging from trawler gear to soda bottles to fuel cans are gathered on a shore at the Bjørnøya Meteorological Station. Photo by Kristine Tofte.

Removing much of the trash proved difficult due to the rocky coastline.

“Farthest away at Kapp Kjellstrøm it is two kilometers back,” the station’s blog notes. “Then we go over a foundation of rocks, hills and we have to cross Lakselva, which is full of water at this time of year. The biggest things like trawl balls, boxes, large ropes and pots we tied together with rope and picked up by boat. Then we had to use a tractor with a crane to take it out of our boat and up to the governor’s boat.”

Employees at the station collected the 400 kilograms of garbage in just half a day – and Tofte said there still plenty remaining.

Unfortunately there was unfortunately snow in the area when we completed the first action,” she told ABC. “Now that more of the snow is gone we have plans for a new cleaning in the near future.”

 

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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