Bertarelli-Annual-Report-2024-LR - Flipbook - Page 50
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Bags of rubbish collected during Diego Garcia beach clean by volunteers © Heather Koldewey
Understanding and Solving
Plastic Pollution
The marine science programme has co-funded research
on the plastics impact on wildlife, focused on sea turtles,
in the Chagos archipelago since 2019. Currently we are
supporting a Darwin Plus Local-funded project which is
assessing the feasibility of bringing a technical solution
to the issue of beach plastic waste on Diego Garcia. With
the amount of plastic pollution arriving on the shores
of remote islands from other countries and shipping,
technology offers a route to turn this waste into useful
items and alleviate the pressure on vulnerable wildlife.
Heather Koldewey speaking at the Third Ocean
Decade Foundations Dialogue Meeting in Monaco
© Prince Albert II Foundation Monaco
Marine Science PhD student Jessica Savage (ZSL/Royal
Holloway, University of London) has been working on
data collected by the marine science programme team
over the last few years to describe the types and sources
of beach plastic items found in the Chagos Archipelago
– particularly drinking water bottles. She has used
information on bottles, from labels, barcodes, and other
markings, to determine their origin. To groundtruth these
findings, we released ten satellite-enabled pollution
trackers that represent 500 ml plastic water bottles.
These are giving live, real-time data over two years to
better understand the movements and routes of plastic
pollution in the archipelago and beyond. Findings from
this research have been synthesised into policy briefings
for the current Global Plastics Treaty negotiations.
Recreational fisheries
The marine science programme is providing logistical
and dive safety support to a Darwin Plus-funded project
‘Improving reef resilience through sustainable fisheries
management on Diego Garcia’ led by Dr David Curnick
(ZSL) with Bangor University and the University of Guam.
The team are conducting impact assessments of the
fisheries around Diego Garcia, including dive surveys
(benthic surveys and diver-operated stereo video),
analysis of available fisheries data, developing biological
reference points for key species by measuring, weighing
and documenting reproductive state of fished samples,
and participatory mapping of key fishing areas. Social
