Walshestown National School

(Coastline Survey Compiled By Pupil’s of St. Paul’s National School)

Pupils of 5 and 6 class at St. Paul’s N.S. Walshestown Clogherhead have been instrumental over a ten-year period in helping to secure and maintain the blue flag status for the wonderful facility of Port beach in Co. Louth. The school is located just 3km inland with an enrolment of 106 children. The work at Port beach is done in conjunction with Hugh McMahon, Brian Rogers from Port Beach Development Committee together with Togher F.A.S Community Employment Scheme, Louth County Council and ‘An Taisce Spring Clean Initiative’.
At present our school is in the An Taisce Green Schools Programme having achieved a Waste and Energy flag to date. Presently we are in the process of preparation for our 3 green flag based on Water and Water Conservation.

With this in mind the children decided that as part of the beach clean up day that they would analyse the waste collected and quantify the amount collected on our coastline based on a length of 3km which they have cleaned for the past ten years now.
This year’s beach clean up day was held on the 28 of May 2010. It involved 5 and 6 class totalling 28 children. Parents volunteered to bring the children to the beach for 9.30 am.
The children were provided with suitable equipment (courtesy of L.C.C and An Taisce) and combed the beach for a total time period of 4 hours where in excess of 100 bags of waste was collected.
The second part of the day involved the collection and identification of rock, plant, shell and fish of
the Clogherhead coastline (some interesting fossils
and skeletal forms were discovered).
Refreshments were served courtesy of Hugh Mc Mahon and Port Beach Development Committee. The Children then completed, identified and classified the objects found through project work. Having made arrangements with Brian Rodgers and Hugh McMahon to, as normal in previous years remove the bags to Louth County Council for disposal, the children suggested that an analysis of the Waste could be done to establish the extent of the problem on our coastline nationally.
Monday 31 May the waste was delivered to the school were on examination we decided to segregate it into 5 categories as follows:

Marine Waste
Plastic (large)
Plastic Bottles
Aluminium Cans
Glass

The 5 categories were placed in fertiliser sling bags and transported for accurate weighing to an official weighbridge under the supervision of L.C.C Weighbridge G.Tuite of Clogherhead. When the weights were recorded a number of children revisited the beach with a trundle wheel, measured the exact distance 2.785km. The children then presented the weighed waste categories in the average amount per kilometre of shoreline. The next task proved difficult despite what they expected - the calculation of maritime county coastline various methods of measurements were suggested;

Consult Internet – Google
An Taisce
Ordinance Survey
Marine Institute
County Development Plans
Coast Watch Ireland

To our surprise (while recognising that our coastline is forever changing) the discrepancy of measurement was incredible ranging from 2700km to 8000km depending who were consulted. The children decided that their mapping skills were sufficient. The traditional measuring of a scaled map using taut string was used - each child had the task of calculating the length of our 18 maritime counties (this result proved equally as confusing). Eventually we received reputable information on our coastline length Following this, tables were created for calculating the amount of waste on each counties coastline together with pie charts and bar graphs. Finally the 18 coastlines were calculated to identify approx the amount of waste washed on our shoreline annually.
While the children accept that different coastlines will vary in the amount of waste accumulating and while the survey is not scientific or completely accurate it must be agreed the calculation of 1,343224kg of annual waste reflects that we are in danger of turning our oceans into a landfill.

Enclosed is a breakdown of each Maritime coasts together with the annual projected weight/volume of waste been washed up on our coastline.

Yours Sincerely
5 & 6 Class Pupils
Walshestown N.S.