Volunteers are needed to help in a cleanup of Little Cayman’s beaches on Saturday, 25 February. 

The cleanup of Point of Sand and Jackson’s Bight begins on Saturday morning, with volunteers meeting at Southern Cross Club at 9am. 

The Southern Cross Club and Cayman Distributors are hosting the cleanup and will provide food and drink to those who turn up to return the beaches to their pristine conditions. 

Point of Sand was one of the turtle nesting beaches in July 2011 and it is expected the turtles will return this year to nest again. 

Student researchers from Kean University, who are studying at the Central Caribbean Marine Institute on Little Cayman, will document how many plastic bags, plastic bottles, cigarette butts, bottle caps and other rubbish are collected. 

The information will be recorded and subsequently used to map trends. Much marine debris ends up on Point of Sand, the easternmost part of Little Cayman, due to equatorial currents. 

Carla Chamberlain, a resident of Nashville, Tennessee, who owns property on the island, organised the cleanup.  

“Little Cayman is sacred ground,” she said. “And Point of Sand, with its slow gradual descent into the water and 360 degree view, has been a gathering point for generations.” 

The Little Cayman National Trust and the Central Caribbean Marine Institute also are supporting the cleanup event. 

Peter Hillenbrand of the Southern Cross Club said: “Our island is a unique and unspoiled ecosystem we must protect for islanders and visitors alike.”  

“We’ve seen the amounts of trash, plastic bottles, shoes, even medical debris, really increase in volume. For those of us who love Little Cayman, this is a personal responsibility,” said Frank Raulstone, director of Cayman Distributors. 

Due to the currents in the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands get a disproportionate amount of marine debris, with rubbish from eastern parts of the Caribbean ending up on local shores.  

Marine debris that washes up in Cayman is being explored as part of a documentary by filmmaker Edward Scott-Clarke, called Plastic Shores.