Ocean Clean Up - Divers Do While Surfer Dudes Don't

The people at Fourth Element have recently launched their Ocean Positive swimwear range. So what you might ask? Well the thing about this particular range is that it is made from recycled fishing nets. These “ghost nets” are abandoned by fisherman after snagging on reefs and wrecks and pose a significant threat to marine life. In short they continue to fish even though abandoned, trapping a staggering variety of marine life and resulting in the loss of thousands upon thousand of creatures each year. They also destroy coral as currents drag them across reefs, literally scrubbing the reef clean. Now however, working with divers around the world, Fourth Element are collecting up these nets and putting them to good use by turning them into snazzy swimwear. The whole range is a bit limited at the moment (the men’s swimwear also looks a little snug for those of us who are more generously sized in the waistline department) but they are surprisingly low priced and the company will soon be releasing rash vests made in the same way. The whole process of turning nets into bikinis is demonstrated below.

Reading about all this recycling, our minds turned to Riz Smith. Do you remember Riz Smith? We do. Riz Smith makes boardshorts and sometime ago he had an aspiration that by 2016 he would be making boardshorts out of ocean plastic. When we first heard about Riz’s desire to create surfers apparel from the plastic garbage that pollutes our oceans we were rather dismissive, in fact we said that Riz’s idea was nothing more than fashion world tokenism that generates sales by playing on middle class guilt. You can read that post here and our follow up post here. Now spurred on by Fourth Element's successful recycling of “ghost nets” we thought it would only be fair if we had a look to see how Riz and his “bottles to boardshorts Journey” was getting on. Back in June someone at Riz’s company called Lou released an update on their website. Yes we know it’s October and the statement was released in June, but to be honest we really haven’t been paying much attention. Anyway before we get started let’s just remind you of those original problems we had with Riz’s plan when we first heard of it. We had concerns over the whole feasibility of making boardshorts out of ocean plastic. How would Riz collect the ocean plastic, who would do the collecting, would they be paid and would that collection have an impact on the mass of plastic floating in the ocean gyres? So let’s see if any of those concerns have been addressed. Here’s the statement:

While it's hard to know exact figures, it is reported up to 8m tonnes of plastics enter the oceans each year. In the UK, we use 15 million plastic bottles per day of which only 50% are recycled. We launched our bottles to boardshorts campaign because we want to encourage customers to recycle but also to show that plastic bottles littering our beaches and oceans can be put to good use. We’ve always talked about the Bottles to Boardshorts project as fitting together pieces of a jigsaw –getting the bottles on beaches to a recycling plant and then linking up the plant with a fabric manufacturer who can then send that fabric to our factory. 

Through our partnership with the Marine Conservation Society, we now know that about 10% of the litter found through beach cleans are plastic bottles.  We need close to 5,000 bottles to make 250 pairs of shorts so we are going to need to collect bottles at more than one beach clean! That’s why we’ve been in discussion with a number of beach cleaning charities and organisations who(sic) work with fishermen to find ways of sorting out plastic bottles and then amalgamating them to send to our recycling plant. Logistics are going to be challenging, as we don’t want to use loads of fuel transporting the bottles from beach to plant. And we’re going to need somewhere to store all those bottles in the short term! 

The reassuring thing we’ve learnt is that it doesn’t seem to matter how dirty or water logged the bottles found on the beaches are – they can still be recycled.  But we do now know we can only use clear Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles to make our shorts which further increases the need to work with a number of beach cleaning organisations to source these.

It’s also been great to start to talk to recycling partners in the UK who can take our beach bottles and transform them into PET pellets or flakes. The bit of the jigsaw we now need to fit together is working out whether the company that currently make our fabric from recycled bottles can use PET flakes made from beach bottles instead. If so, we also need to test whether it can be made from 100% beach bottles or, for quality and durability’s sake, it needs to be made from a combination of beach bottles and standard recycled bottles (i.e the ones you put in your bag at home). 

So, as you can see there are still a lot of questions for us to work on but we feel we are making great progress and learning loads on the way. 

A lot of questions Lou? A lot of questions? Are you serious? Are you telling us that you have only just found out that most of the litter on the beaches is not actually clear PET plastic bottles? Are you also telling us that you still haven’t figured out how to effectively collect, transport and store the plastic bottles. And, and this is really fundamental Lou, are you telling us that you still haven’t figured out whether you can make the fabric from ocean plastic in the first place? There’s another thing Lou, something that has got us confused. Your statement seems to suggest that you are already making fabric from standard recycled bottles, (i.e the ones you put in your bag at home), but as of yet not from ocean plastic. Which begs another question Lou, are you really just planning to make the fabric from standard recycled bottles and using the ocean plastic thing as nothing more than a marketing plan? Are you Lou…? Then there’s another problem. In our original post on the subject we pointed out that beach clean-ups are a good idea but most of the plastic polluting the oceans are not on beaches they’re in the ocean gyres – the ocean gyres Lou! Those great big whirlpools out in the middle of the oceans, and even if the plastic does wash up on the beach Lou we think you’re being a bit optimistic if you think it’s going to be on the single beach you’re planning to clean up.

Now we know that there are people out there in the big wide world who aren’t as cynical as us and will say that although Riz’s journey has, so far, been a little disappointing but at least he is trying to do something. To those people we would say, you probably aren’t one of the many people who gave Riz over £16,000 via crowdfunding in order to get the journey off and running in the first place. If you are one of those crowdfunders we would say, what are you doing? Why are you donating money to an established commercial company in order for that company to research the commercial viability of bringing a product to market? Still you probably got a t-shirt for the effort. Okay, maybe we are being a bit hard here. Maybe Riz and Lou just need more time. After all if they can make ocean plastic into boardshorts, even very expensive ones, that would be a good idea right? And maybe this isn’t just fashion world tokenism or a cynical marketing ploy. Maybe Riz needs to stop telling us about his aspiration and actually get busy turning that aspiration into reality. In which case we have a suggestion for Riz and Lou. Go and have a chat with the chaps at Fourth Element because they seem to have got this “waste material to commercial product” idea well and truly nailed. If you do that Riz, if you have a chat Lou, we think you might find out that it is better to make the product first and then market it. Rather than market it, and then try to work out if you can actually make it. In short Riz it’s the difference between simply aspiring and actually doing!

In Search Of Those Elusive Trumpetfish

“Very rare.” Hardly ever seen.” These are the general responses we got when we asked the La Palma locals about the Atlantic Trumpetfish.  Responses that were almost universally accompanied by shakes of the head, shoulder shrugs and more statements like: “if you get real lucky you might see one in the early morning” or “They can change colour you know, blend in, and in these waters you could swim right by one and never know.”

Now, we know that the Atlantic Trumpetfish do exist. We’ve seen images of them on television, we’ve seen photographs of them on the Web and we had heard that La Palma and the Canary Islands in general, were a good place to see these odd fish. Now however, we were beginning to think that the Atlantic Trumpetfish was something out of an episode of the X-files. A strange mythological creature that an overexcited Mulder believes exists, yet simply can’t find the evidence to prove it to a pouting, doubtful, Scully. Undaunted by the locals insistence that we were more likely to spot a U.F.O than a Trumpetfish, we began to formulate a plan to catch the camera shy critters on film.

Ok Mulder, it's a naked girl doing weird things with a trumpet! But how does that prove anything?

The Atlantic Trumpetfish is a cylindrical shaped fish that can grow up to a metre long. Closely related to pipefish and seahorses, it uses its long snout like a vacuum cleaner, easily sucking in its prey of small fish and invertebrates. Some Trumpetfish in South Africa and the Caribbean have been observed using shadow-stalking behaviour to hunt, using their narrow profile to hide behind larger browsing feeders like Parrotfish and Surgeonfish, surprising unsuspecting prey who drift too close to the benign browser. The Trumpetfish’s notorious shyness and ability to blend in with their environment would, of course, present a significant problem to our goal as would the locals honest assessment of the Islands waters. Sitting in the Atlantic, and battered by the strong trade wins the coastal waters of La Palma are often dark, rough and murky. So in grey, wind-lashed seas famous for strong currents, we would be trying to spot a thin, agile fish that can blend effortlessly into the background and has a reputation for being shyer than mating pandas. A bit of a tall order you’ll agree. We decided that the best chances of seeing these fish would be to enter the water in the very early hours of the morning or late in the evening when the waters were bereft of splashing swimmers and small fishing boats with their chuttering motors.

 

Chinese Trumpetfish

Our sad effort to capture an Atlantic Trumpetfish - the buggers are fast

Did we succeed in our quest? You bet we did. The rough waters hampered filming considerably, as did the poor visibility. This was further compounded by the Trumpetfish’s irritating habit of disappearing between the rocks. Still we’re pretty pleased with the result, particularly as we came across three Trumpetfish gathered together near the breakwaters of Los Cancajos beach – though only for a few seconds. Check out the film below for the results of our labours. Trumpetfish do exist Scully, they do, we filmed them!

La Palma Island. A Dangerous Snorkelling Club Quick Guide

Roque De Los Muchachos Observatory

La Palma Island is situated in the North West of the Canarian Archipelago.  La Palma and its neighbours, La Gomera and El Hierro, are referred to as the lesser known canaries due to the fact that they have managed to avoid the excesses of mass tourism that affected Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote. One reason for this is that all three of these islands lack the fine glistening beaches of the more popular islands and the small number of actual tourists that visit each year, along with most of the locals, live in hope that such mainstream tourism never does reach the island’s volcanic shores.

Lacking mass tourist infrastructure, La Palma tends to attract the more adventurous visitor. In the summer months the island teems with walkers, hikers, snorkellers, freedivers and those of the scuba diving fraternity. During the off-season the island still attracts hikers and nature lovers but also large numbers of the more mature tourist head here looking for a little peace and quiet away from the noisy nightclubs, bar crawlers and the teenage sex and drugs crowd that plague the islands to the East. There are several tourist areas on the island but the main ones are around the area of Los Cancajos and the Capital, Santa Cruz Del La Palma. In all the main areas you’ll find a spattering of bars and restaurants and low-rise hotels. There are also two diving centres in Los Cancajos from where you can rent equipment and arrange boat trips to the major offshore diving areas.

In natural beauty terms, La Palma puts all the other islands of the Archipelago to shame. Rugged coastal regions with crashing waves, beaches of fine black volcanic sand, verdant forests, gushing waterfalls, mountain ranges and a lush subtropical climate, La Palma offers something for anyone with a little adventure in their spirit.

Los Cancajos beach

La Palma is also famous for two rather differing controversies. The first is all down to a certain raunchy pop singer, whilst the second concerns an all too familiar scientific warning of impending global disaster. Back in the 1980’s Madonna released her True Blue album, the sixth song of which was called La Isla Bonita. According to some, many of who seem to work at the La Palma tourist board, the song La Isla Bonita (the beautiful island in Spanish) refers to La Palma. Madonna is supposed to have stayed on the island at some time in the past – though this has never been confirmed. Others however are adamant that the song refers to the Island of San Pedro in Belize. Madonna is supposed to have dedicated the song to San Pedro for some reason that is never really explained. Interestingly Madonna has stated in Rolling Stone Magazine, that the San Pedro mentioned in the song is a fictional island and does not refer to either island and may in fact be a sign for the off ramp. This admission doesn’t seem to have had much effect though as both the locals of La Palma and the denizens of San Pedro still claim that the song refers to their respective island homes. The second controversy has all the makings of an episode of The Big Bang Theory where academic egos engage in a battle of hypotheses. The story goes that back in the 1990’s one group of scientific egos claimed that at some point in the future a large chunk of La Palma would collapse into the ocean creating a mega tsunami. A wall of water hundreds of metres tall would then spread out from the island, wreaking havoc on the African coast, devastating the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and washing all the dog crap off the streets of Paris. Yes, yes, we know. Nothing can be that strong that it can rid the streets of the French capital of all the accumulated dog mess, the aroma of which mixes with the stench of the River Seine to create that oh so romantic French atmosphere, and it wasn’t long before another bunch of scientific egos proved it as well. The second bunch of egos pointing out that the first bunch of egos were being egotistical and unscientific unlike them who were being humble and scientific – Leonard and Sheldon, eat your heart out.

Watching me watching you

The island is littered with little coves and beaches; some very difficult to get to, where the more adventurous snorkellers among you can sate your appetite for the underwater world. However the four best areas, in our opinion, are in Los Cancajos, Charco Verde and the beaches of Playa Del Hoyo and Playa La Martina. Given that La Palma is situated in the Atlantic all of the beaches are at times subject to strong waves, winds and currents that make conditions unsuitable for even the most experienced snorkeller. That said, of all the four sites we recommend, Los Cancajos is by far the safest.

Sandwiched between the airport and the capital, Santa Cruz Del La Palma, the beach of Los Cancajos is in fact a series of little interconnected beaches and coves rather than a single beach. Protected by an artificial breakwater, Los Cancajos boasts an array of underwater tunnels, reefs and rock walls that will delight freedivers as well as shallow pools and rock formations closer to the beach that attract enough marine life to interest the less experienced snorkellers. The more daring among you might prefer to try out the delights of Charco Verde. Located a short drive from Puerto Naos on the western side of the island, Charco Verde is a wide cove of fine volcanic sand with rocky headlands on either side. The water can be considerably rougher than at Los Cancajos and visibility is often compromised at the best of times. The beach is also subject to rip currents that make entering and exiting the water here particularly problematic. That said, Charco Verde has a great deal to offer including canyons, strange volcanic formations and large shoals of fish loitering beneath overhangs and in between the volcanic fissures. If you like your water even rougher and the feel of pebble rather than sand beneath your feet, then the beaches of Playa Del Hoyo and Playa La Martina might be for you. Both sites are located on the eastern side of the island and are a short drive south of the airport. The beaches are reached by a narrow dirt track that can play havoc with the underside of your rental car and it might be worth parking up on the main road and taking a stroll down to the beach. A word of warning here too, both of these beaches offer rough water snorkelling at its very best and are not for the feint-hearted, if you are inexperienced or unfit you will undoubtedly get into difficulty here and should stick to less demanding sites such as Los Cancajos or the man made (though rather boring) rock pools at Los Sauces in the north. For those of you who have the experience and physical fitness however, Playa Del Hoyo and Playa La Martina with their tunnels, caves, gulleys and rocky fissures will not disappoint. All four sites teem with fish. Charco Verde and Los Cancajos in particular are home to shoals of sardines, bream, trumpet fish, damselfish, parrotfish and a good many more. One final note; the water temperature in La Palma never gets above around 24 degrees even at the height of summer and can fall below 15 degrees in the winter months so a wetsuit is highly recommended.

One of the breakwaters at Los Cancajos

When not snorkelling, La Palma still has a lot to offer. A visit to the astrophysics observatory at Roque De Los Muchachos is not to be missed. The phenomenal clarity of the air in La Palma means that astronomers, physicists and other scientific folk flock to La Palma to make use of the plethora of telescopes that dot the mountain ridges. At certain times you can even take a guided tour of the installations. Once you’ve finished peering into the sky you can take a lung-challenging hike around the caldera of Taburiente or get lost in the national park with its waterfalls, forests and winding tracks. If you’re not exhausted by all that, you can take a trip to the volcano centre at San Antonio, learn about all things grapey at the Las Manchos wine museum or visit the salt flats at Fuencaliente and then there are lighthouses to see, shops to peruse in Santa Cruz, or you could book a day trip to one of the other islands in the Archipelago.

Observatory above the clouds

Once you have had your fill of sea, nature and culture it’s time to get your fill of food and beer. Here though things get a bit tricky. Although there are a great many restaurants and cafes to choose from, the majority are not exactly culinary Meccas. The best two restaurants we found were El Lagar and Thai Las Olas, both in the Los Cancajos area. El Lagar is located in a shopping arcade but don’t let that put you off. El Lagar is typically Canarian in décor and ambience, the service is attentive but discreet and although the menu is small this should be seen as a good thing. Restaurants that try to be all things to all men with menus the size of encyclopaedias tend to be jack-of-all-trades and masters of none which means your dinner is probably going to be rubbish. El Lagar keeps things simple but that simplicity is very well done indeed. Try the tapas plate for a varied taste of the islands culinary offerings, after that we recommend the pork tenderloin or one of the fresh fish dishes that are on offer.

Err,, That'll be cactus then!

For a change to the Spanish offerings head off to the Hotel Las Olas and its Thai restaurant. Having a Japanese member in the club and living in London (the capital city of the world with every national cuisine you can think of readily available) we consider ourselves to be experts in Asian cooking and normally the thought of visiting a Thai, Indian or Chinese restaurant in a tourist area of a small island would fill us with dread. Thai Las Olas however, was a pleasant surprise. There were exceptions though, the Chicken Pad Thai has tomato ketchup as sauce and the Thai curry was nowhere near spicy enough for our tastes. The beef salad though was as good as any we have tasted and the weeping tiger steak was spicy enough to do as its name suggests and bring a tear to the eye. The noodle dishes are particularly good and the spring rolls (something most Thai restaurants fall down on) were second to none. Once stuffed to bursting we went to look for a bar and here, like most Greek and Spanish islands, we were left very disappointed. There are places to sate the thirst but most are attached to restaurants and all seem to have no idea how to store, pour or serve beer. Still the beer was cold if not much else and we can handle this small disappointment as La Palma hits the mark on so many other things.

You can fly direct to La Palma all year round from Madrid and in the summer season flights are available from London, Berlin and other European cities. In the winter months there are flight connections via Tenerife. There are also ferry connections from Tenerife and Gran Canaria. A word of warning though, if you are flying British Airways or Iberia Express or combinations of the two, take note that both airlines are notorious for being late and for mislaying your luggage on route. Read about our own experience here.