By Ian Holmes

Massive clean-up of Vancouver Island shoreline complete

Sep 27, 2016 | 2:31 PM

NANAIMO — Marine trash littered throughout Vancouver Island’s West Coast equaling the weight of seven adult killer whales has been picked up and barged away.

Forty tons of mainly styrofoam, fishing gear and plastics in 400 garbage bags on shorelines from just north of Port Renfrew to the northern tip have been plucked by a helicopter, according to the Living Oceans Society executive director Karen Wristen.

She says hopefully this effort is an eye-opener to people about all of the avoidable plastics going into the ocean.

“That’s one thing we hope to showcase as we begin unpacking all this stuff on the weekend and sorting it for disposal. There are going to be mountains of disposable plastics that are post-consumer waste,” says Wristen.

Wristen says plastics are a particular concern, because once they’re broken down in to bite-size pieces, all kinds of marine life including birds eat it and can die.

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Seven different groups helped pull off what she believes is the largest ever shoreline clean-up in Western Canada.

She says most of the trash was gathered in the early spring, but says some of it was collected much earlier.

“In fact, we picked up some bags from the Nuu-Chah-Nulth Tribal Council that had been collected last year…it’s a little more than one year’s effort.”

The massive beach garbage removal effort has been a major undertaking for the Living Oceans Society — Wristen says thankfully they’ll only be on the hook for upwards of $12,000 in costs for the barge, tugboat and helicopter rentals, thanks to financial support from the Japanese Government as well as private donations.

Wristen says about a third of the debris on the northwest side of the Island was from a 2011 earthquake and tsunami, while much of the rest was avoidable littering, including from countries that don’t have proper recycling programs.

The garbage has been towed to Delta where Wristen says it will be sorted this weekend.