The Great British Beach Clean is an event organised by the Marine Conservation Society, spanning from Friday 15th to Sunday 24th September this year, during which hundreds of beach cleans take place across the UK. As mentioned in last week’s blog post, we spent the first weekend visiting Trimley Marshes in Suffolk, where we assisted with the beach clean organised by Suffolk Wildlife Trust (SWT).

We arrived at the reserve ahead of the official start time to help Joe Underwood, the South East Suffolk Warden at SWT, set up ready for the arrival of volunteers. Before the beach clean commenced we had the pleasure of meeting Justin Zantboer, a birder and A-Ringer, who invited us to watch some bird ringing at Trimley Marshes. Justin talked us through the data taken, including location, species, wing length, weight, the fat and the pec check, and the ageing of the bird. Once the data is taken, a ring is then attached to the bird’s leg, which has a unique ID code. If the bird is recaptured at any point in its life, that code will allow you to see previous data and understand where the bird has travelled from, and if there have been changes in the bird’s health since it was last caught. After an insightful morning spectating the ringing process, Justin was kind enough to let us release some of the birds, which was great fun!

The beach clean began at around 10am, and the volunteers were split into two groups; one larger group which participated in a general beach clean, whilst a smaller group conducted a survey. The survey was carried out using Marine Conservation Society methodology, picking up every piece of litter within a marked area, and categorising it into material and item type. This data is highly valuable, as the findings act as evidence to lobby Governments and fuel campaigns against pollution.

After a successful day of beach cleaning, Jasmine and I were tasked with weighing the litter and inputting all of the data collected from the surveys into the Marine Conservation Society’s Beachwatch app. Altogether, we collected an astonishing 99.1kg of litter, with a total of 3463 pieces of litter collected within the survey area alone. Thank you to Joe for organising the beach clean, and to all the volunteers who helped us hit this total.

The following day, Joe took us for a tour around the reserve and told us a little about its history. The site was a blank canvas in 1990, and was sculpted into a wetlands habitat to mitigate for the loss of Fagbury Mudflats, which were impacted by the expansion of the Port of Felixstowe. The wetlands are under constant maintenance from Joe and a group of volunteers, and different sections of the reserve are artificially flooded throughout the year to upkeep the habitat and account for seasonal changes in wildlife.

Despite being largely manmade, Trimley Marshes have been highly successful in attracting wildlife, with a particularly notable array of bird species. Alongside the plentiful waterfowl and wader species, we saw some harder-to-spot reptiles, common lizards and a grass snake, basking atop of and resting beneath refugia mats. This made me feel particularly nostalgic, as I completed my university dissertation on artificial refugia preferences of reptiles. It was lovely to see refugia across the reserve, providing resting and hiding places for reptiles and amphibians.

Sian