Plenty More Fish...?

This piece of art was made for the people of Kingsand-Cawsand by five young Austrian volunteers who helped to remove about one tonne (130 sacks) of marine litter from the beaches of the Rame Peninsula in September 2014.

Marine plastic is not just an eyesore. Each year it is estimated to kill one million sea birds and at least 100,000 whales, dolphins, seals and turtles, which either mistake plastic for food or become entangled in it.

Humanity has only been using plastic for around 60 years, but since it takes hundreds of years to break down the amount of it in the environment is growing rapidly. In some parts of the ocean there are now six times more plastic particles than plankton.

It is sobering to think that every piece of plastic we have ever used will still be around long after our own bodies have decomposed!

A big thank you to Chiara Fahrthofer, Lisa Nalter, Dominik Orbini, Dominik Rainer, and Antonia Grunser for all their help in cleaning our local beaches. 

We hope their work, as part of the Ruckenwind: Stargazy Environment project, will make everybody think more about how much plastic we use – and what happens to it when we throw it ‘away’. 

Plenty More Fish...? has now been permanently installed on the wall of The Manse on Garrett Street, Cawsand.