Thurso-based Pentland Canoe Club helps collect a tonne of rubbish from Caithness beaches
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Paddlers in Caithness have collected more than 1.3 tonnes of litter from the coast as part of a national clean-up campaign.
The members of Pentland Canoe Club, based in Thurso, removed the plastic pollution and other waste from three locations in the county and one further afield.
British Canoeing's Big Paddle Clean-up aims to remove plastic and other rubbish from areas that paddlers use or visit.
Working with Caithness Beach Cleans, they tidied up locations at Occumster, Canisbay and Scorrie Island, south of Wick, which are otherwise difficult to access.
The fourth spot was an area of shoreline near Eilean Donan Castle in Ross-shire.
The volunteers removed sacks full of plastic waste, which included drink bottles, fishing nets, pipes and food packaging. Over 610kg was removed from the shore near Scorrie Island. An amazing 17 tyres were also removed from one location.
A message in a bottle was also found and efforts are ongoing to trace the sender.
Nancy Speirs, from the Pentland Canoe Club, who organised the clean-ups, said: “Removing this plastic has helped to reduce the impact to our marine environment. The plastic does not biodegrade, instead it breaks down into smaller pieces which stay in our environment forever and at this stage it becomes impossible to remove.
"Fish and other creatures then mistake the plastic particles for food, eat it; plastic is then in our food chain. The impact on human health is unknown. Birds and other wildlife can also become entangled, often leading to death.”
Dorcas Sinclair from Caithness Beach Cleans said: “This has been another fantastic collaboration between Caithness Beach Cleans and Pentland Canoe Club. It is great to have the backing of the club, who can get to beaches that are difficult to access from shore and together we are able to gather and remove debris from them.
"The club have skills and equipment that mesh well with that of the Beach Cleans group, this makes it possible to realistically remove beach plastics that were previously unreachable.
"We hope that there will be many more future collaborative efforts between the two groups. Together we will continue to keep our Caithness and Sutherland beaches beautiful.”
