A Guernsey marine biologist soon expects to have collected 330 different brands of waste plastic water bottle, which equates to the number of separate species of fish in British territorial waters.

Richard Lord, and a dedicated group of beachcombers, have been collecting and logging the plastic water bottles that regularly wash up on Guernsey's beaches.

Mr Lord has taken pictures of the separate varieties at his St Peter Port home and soon expects that number to pass a significant, if environmentally chilling, milestone:

"What I'm doing is a photographic record of the foreign litter that's washing up on the Guernsey shore. And I'm almost certain we'll get to that figure, that there'll be more plastic water brands in the English Channel than there are species of fish in British waters."

"According to Google there are about 330 species and that includes out on the continental shelf, so it includes deep water fish." 

Picture courtesy of Found on the Beach in Guernsey.

Richard Lord says the collection is a joint effort, and thanks the small group of dedicated beachcombers, united in the Facebook group 'Found on the Beach in Guernsey' who go out in all weathers to clear the bays of waste:

"When they find a foreign water bottle they call or message me and ask, do you want it, and I say, yes please."

"I can confidently say there are more brands of plastic bottle, but I am targeting plastic water bottles. There has been such a tremendous growth in plastic water production around the globe. It's probably over a trillion bottles (annually) and if we had potable water (onboard all merchant ships) then we could cut down on something we don't need, that's causing environmental harm."

Last autumn, Richard Lord attended an International Maritime Organisation Conference, which was due to deal with litter, especially plastic waste, being thrown overboard by merchant ships.

He funded that trip with prize money from entering his marine litter project in a Guernsey Environmental awards scheme:

"The Insurance Corporation should be thanked for supporting the Guernsey Shipping Litter Project. I was awarded the runner-up prize and that made possible my visit to London to give a presentation to the International Maritime Organisation in early October."

The conference failed to get to the issue of marine litter, but it will be on the agenda again in late January 2025, when evidence collected in Guernsey will be used to make the case to clamp down on ship's owners whose crew throw waste overboard:

"Annex 5, of the Marine Pollution Convention, prohibits litter being disposed of at sea, particularly plastic litter. For large ships over 400 tonnes, the ban has been in place since the end of 1988."

"Too many crews are dumping litter at sea. An association of ship owners, called BIMCO, estimated conservatively that at least a billion plastic bottles are being used on merchant ships every year. Even if a small percentage of those one billion bottles are thrown overboard, that still represents a considerable source of plastic litter."

"Guernsey is 45 km or so south east of the major international shipping lanes. We have ships from every corner of the world passing Guernsey. As they approach a port they are getting rid of their surplus rubbish, not all of them, maybe only a small percentage, but the fact we're getting litter from Latin America, North America, Asia, India, the Middle East, and Mediterranean countries, like Turkey and Greece, indicates to me that's it's not a few ships doing it."

"We even get Russian litter. Russia has contributed far more recently; ships from Kaliningrad or St Petersburg. We even had a tub of army boot polish of Russian origin washing up on Guernsey."

A snapshot of the busy Channel shipping lanes, courtesy of Marine Traffic.

He says the shipping litter issue will be looked by the IMO later this month in London:

"Guernsey research has actually contributed to a paper being submitted at that meeting, by Dr Sian Prior, who's an IMO delegate. She's used the data we provided."

Meanwhile, the strong south westerly winds and large tidal flows continue to wash ship borne plastic waste from all over the world onto Guernsey's beaches.