A marine debris cleanup project based on Quadra Island has finally wrapped up collection and sorting of 45 tons of materials from 357 kilometers of surrounding coastlines this fall.

The cleanup focused on the intertidal beach zones of designated islands. Photo by Breanne Quesnel.

Spirit of the West Adventures, a guided kayaking tour company on Quadra, was one of the three organizations awarded funding through the Clean Coast, Clean Waters initiative. The grant is part of the Stronger BC provincial post-pandemic economic recovery plan, and emphasized creating jobs for youth as well as working with First Nations communities.

Breanne Quesnel, co-owner and operator of Spirit of the West Adventures, said in the first few weeks of collection in October, “the volume of debris that we're finding is mind blowing.”

The collection crews' goal was to pick up larger pieces of plastic before the broke down into tiny pieces. Photo by Brendan Kowtecky.

Her teams combed intertidal zones on the shores of primarily Quadra, Read, Maurelle, Cortes, Marina, Grant and Mittlenatch Islands. They covered 34.2 kilometers of shoreline on Cortes, being limited by the funding to areas that had not been recently cleaned through other initiatives.

The general scope of the cleanup operations. Map courtesy of Spirit of the West Adventures.

The fieldwork was anticipated to run for just over a month but in the end took closer to three. Everything had to be sorted, weighed and recorded, and Quesnel said 55 per cent of the total debris was shipped to Ocean Legacy Foundation, a marine-debris-specific recycling facility in Richmond, BC.

The team created this chart tallying the final weights of collected debris. Photo courtesy of Breanne Quesnel.

The collection teams brought in vast amounts of aquaculture materials, and Quesnel hopes their detailed report might create policy around responsibility for ocean cleanup within the industry. But there were also plenty of consumer goods, and to this end Quesnel urges everyone to make smart purchasing choices to reduce packaging and single-use materials that can easily end up on a pristine beach.

Spirit of the West Adventures co-owners wrote into a local publication explaining they were temporarily sorting massive amounts of marine debris in their front yard. Photo by Brendan Kowtecky.

Listen to the CKTZ News interview with Breanne Quesnel below: