If one person can make a change, imagine what 7.458 billion of us can do.
Via our Facebook page, Mario Oostendurp, founding member of Proudly Strandfontein, was kind enough to share this email, which follows below, that Keith Blake from Ottery emailed to the Friends of Strandfontein Pavilion.
We are so proud of, and profoundly encouraged by, not only Young Biologist Kauthar du Toit, but also Mr Blake himself for the impact they made on one seemingly random Sunday in October. Beach debris is not only ugly to look at, but can be lethal too.
Read on to find out what happened just this past weekend in Strandfontein…
Subject: Dedicated beach volunteer biologist
On 16 October 2016 my wife Tina and I drove along the beach on Baden Powel Road and then we saw at Strandfontein beach a group of people of different ages picking up all kinds of dirt and debris and placing it into large light blue plastic bags. This got my full attention and I decided to investigate who and why were these people in the late morning cleaning up the beach.
I then discovered that a young lady, a grade 10 learner, Kauthar Du Toit from San Souci Girls High School, was doing a cleanup of the beach with her family members, including her noble 76-year-old grandfather Mr Abdullah du Toit, as part of her certificate requirements for her volunteer position as a Young Biologist at the Two Oceans Aquarium.
She was doing a week-long course and this beach cleanup was part of the course, and here she was supported by about 10 of her family members and I could not help but get a lump in my throat.
You could hear and see how proud her grandfather and the family was of young Kauthar. This type of dedication and family support is seldom seen and should be encouraged, and this family is an example to one and all.
The sad part of this story was that one can see by the debris and items strewn on the beaches that some fishermen are regarding their dedicated hobby ground as a dump, and I hope this young lady and her family are an example of what we as fishermen must do with our waste. This example must motivate the fishermen to also do a volunteering cleanup of the beaches.
The other issue that also came to the fore is that there are no dirt bins on this whole stretch of beach, and Kauthar and her family had to take the 14 bags of dirt to a nearby dump.
To add a final touch to this story, later that afternoon my son Morne and I went fishing with my beach buggy and we noticed quite a lot of fishermen. As we parked we saw this huge seagull between the rocks on the beach. As we neared the seagull it flew up and to our horror we saw it being pulled to the ground by a four metre discarded fishing line. After a little struggle and avoiding a very sharp beak, which reminded me of a Okapi pocket knife, we subdued the seagull and it took a while to cut the line, embedded into its legs and wings. When the line was removed I threw the seagull into the air and it landed on the parking area a few metres away and then took off and as it flew away.
I could not help but think of Kauthar du Toit and her family.
Keith Alfred Adolph Blake
Ottery
