1 puffin, 500 bottles, 6 footballs, 10 bags of rubbish, 9 shoes and a bath duck

Siobhan and Natalie with their booty.

Amazed and slightly depressed our team of Isle of May SNH volunteers spent some of their time clearing Pilgrims Haven and Rona of the rubbish that had built up over the winter. In rain and howling wind they bagged a huge amount of rubbish, raking around in the slimy pools on Rona and the kelp choked tide line of Pilgrims. Amongst all this rubbish they collected was over 500 plastic bottles, all of which must have been disposed off irresponsibly, 6 footballs (explains the reason for the current state of Scottish football), an exhaust pipe, a barrel of sump oil, 9 shoes (no pairs), a sparkly apple (!) and a bath duck, which must have swum there.
Of these we will recycle the plastic bottles, any metal pulled out which goes as scrap and the sump oil that will go off the island with some waste diesel to be processed. But you can't help get angry when you think of so many people just chucking rubbish away rather than taking responsibility for their own waste.
And the puffin - yet another dead one washed up as part of the wreck - is there a direct connection between the waste and the dead puffin? - who knows but there is an indirect connection in that there are too many people not caring for the environment around them. End of rant.

Gill and Lynne heroically clearing bottles from a slime pool

Gillian surveying the Mars wreck at the end of the island

More rubbish on silver sands

Brendan dragging back a fish box

Another pile of rubbish