Lost Lobster Creels, Fishing Nets and Ropes on Sanday

Hi Everyone
I'm just back from a fabulous 7 days on the Orkneys, well the mainland and Sanday Island to be specific.  We will be sailing between mainland Scotland and the Orkney Island of Hoy on our round Britain expedition.  We leave in 3 weeks on Monday!!!

The Orkneys are well aware of their beach litter issue.  They put up signs reminding people to not throw litter over board on the ferries and the communities come out and do beach cleans.  However, the beaches that I walked were not clean.  The main issue is lost fishing gear, particularly lobster creels, floats, fishing nets and ropes.  And plenty of plastic bottles.  I also saw lots of broken down plastic: fragments of plastic bottles, pieces of buoys and rope filaments in particular.  I even found a bottle and a squirty cream aerosol can that were Spanish - floated from Spain or lost from a Spanish vessel?

I found very little glass fragments; I remember that 45 years ago I used to collect sea polished coloured glass, there would be lots of it.  Now it's plastic bottles, reflecting the change from glass bottles and jars for drinks etc to plastic.

Last night I did my first talk, at the Snowgoose cafe bar in Macclesfield.  It went down well, although I was picked up on the term 'micro'.  'Micro plastics' is the given term for any plastic pieces that are smaller than 0.5cm or 5mm.  Strictly speaking 'micro' should refer to measurements done in Microns.   There are 1000 microns in a millimeter - a bit cumbersome to say 5000 microns.  I'm just using the recognized term that has been given, however, the issue of microscopic particles of a few microns is massive too - the manta nets we will be using are not fine enough to pick them up.  These particles are small enough to move into individual cells and are literally a whole other kettle of fish that will need looking at next.