22/09/2026
Wishing Strandloper Project all the best on this next project - the work you do is admirable 💪❤️
Strandloper Project gears up to track trails of plastic pollution along the Southern Cape coastline.
For ocean watchers in the Southern Cape, 2026 has been an interesting year so far. A severe drought was broken in May by a sequence of two severe storms washing beaches away. Then there was first time record of a Fin Whale washing ashore on a South Africa beach. Next, were two observations of Rosso’s Dolphins in False bay, again both first time inshore sightings of this species with one Risso’s Dolphin stranding and then being refloated by concerned citizens.
Our coastline has been battered by two epic severe cut off low storms which ejected massive amounts of sediment laden flood waters into the ocean, along with plastic pollution. In late August sardines began washing up, with possible causes ranging from an epidemic viral infection to record high sea temperatures.
With this backdrop of events, the volunteer team of Strandloper Project is in their final preparation for their 8th annual coastal research expedition. This year the team will be hiking from Wilderness to Nature’s Valley, hiking approximately 150km over nine days. The terrain will be a mix of sandy beaches and steep rocky shoreline, including two adventurous stages of scaling a cliff and passing through a sea cave, both of which have to be done at low tide.
The team will have three primary goals, namely to document the density and distribution of ocean plastic waste and washed out fishing gear, record indicator marine fauna species like African Black Oystercatchers, and to document incidents of infected fauna, such as rabid seals and marine birds exhibiting symptoms of bird flu.
We will be using our expedition program in CyberTracker to record georeferenced data from our range of surveys. For plastic pollution, we conduct a Trashy20 survey every 5km and mini transects in between. The Trashy20 transect is a series of thee 10m x 2m transects at the high-water mark. All plastic and fishing gear is categorized in type, and for microplastics, separated into primary colours, and then counted. Strandloper Project introduced primary colour categories in 2020 as we noticed that the microplastic colour ratios varied according to the distance from rivers and municipal infrastructure. Recent international microplastic research in marine environments suggest that different colours are misidentified as food and targeted by marine fauna.
Our incidental and mini transect surveys record unusual items, marine fauna and high density washouts of plastic pollution along the entire shoreline. From our previous 7 expeditions, we have managed to survey over 2000 African Black Oystercatchers between Pringle Bay and Cape Recife. Data from our 2024 expedition showed that the Walker Bay Oystercatcher population had an increase from the 2021 expedition survey.
As part of our second series of expeditions, this years route will be the second time along this section of shoreline and it will be interesting to compare the results from our 2020 expedition. A special focus will be to document nurdle densities, as densities on the Robberg Beach in 2020 were high, exceeding 1000 nurdles/m. This time round, we will be distinguishing the variety of nurdle type, as routine surveys have subsequently shown up to 14 different types of nurdles, categorized by size, shape and colour. The constant replenishment of nurdles and the variety of types on beaches along the shoreline suggests that the loss of nurdles into the ocean is an ongoing process and not restricted to shipping accidents that occurred in 2017 and 2020 respectively.
The expedition will start from Wilderness on the 7th October and finish in Nature’s Valley on the 15th October. For more detail of the route, objectives of the expedition and how you can assist the team, visit the Strandloper Project website at https://www.strandloperproject.org/expedition2026.html or email Mark at [email protected].
You can follow the progress of the expedition and our daily finding on the Strandloper Project Facebook and Instagram accounts.
The team for the 2026 expedition are Jonathon Britton, Helia van Zyl, Lisa de Speville, Mark Dixon, Liz Bazin, Mandy Pelser, Rose Bilbrough and Chris Leggatt.
