Maya Bay is famous throughout the world: first as “The Beach” in the Leonardo Dicaprio movie of the same name and, more recently, as the beach that was closed to the public due to excessive damage from tourist traffic.
Trash Hero Koh Phi Phi had the privilege of holding a recent cleanup on the now deserted beach, by invitation of the Marine National Park Research Centre 3 and the head of the Maya Bay Rehabillitation Project, Supaporn Prempee.
Together with the National Park rangers and Ocean Quest, an international NGO who are overseeing the coral nursery program in the bay, 26 volunteers carried out the first ever microplastic survey on the beach.
“Despite the beach having been cleaned of all visible debris several times since the closure in June 2018, we were able to find 1.5kg of micro plastic particles [small pieces < 5mm in length], in an area of 150sqm [30m x 5m],” said Caroline Lecky from the local Trash Hero team.
That’s thousands of buried pieces of plastic, mostly invisible to the naked eye as you walk along the sand. The majority of these were “secondary microplastics”, or fragments of larger plastic items such as bottles and foam boxes that have broken down in the sun and ocean currents. Plastic never biodegrades. There are likely to be more, even finer particles that slipped through the sieves.
Anuar Abdullah, the founder of Ocean Quest, said of the micro plastic survey that: “the data will be saved and we will do regular sifting of the designated area to see if there is any reduction.”
In total, the team collected and removed 308kg of trash from the stunning Thai beach.
Thanks to Blue View Divers and also Barakuda Diving, who sponsored the transport and cleaning materials for the day, and to David and Parn for the beautiful video. Our thanks also to the Maya Beach Protection Unit 5 (National Park) for hosting Trash Hero, providing fruit and refreshments and joining the cleanup.
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