Claire Newton, WADI GINAI BEACH CLEANUP REPORT, 08 JUNE 2006 (World Oceans Day); First project I coordinated with the help of the Volunteer Rangers was to organize a beach clean up at Wadi Ginai for World Oceans Day on the 8th June.

Aim: To clean up a particularly dirty area of natural beauty in Dahab – the coastal stretch down at Wadi Ginai, where there are over 6 dive sites in regular use.  The importance of removing this rubbish is to prevent it from ending up in the sea where it threatens the life of the coral reef and its inhabitants. It was also a chance to try and get the Dahab community involved as a whole.

Planning: Prior to the day I sent emails round to all of the dive centres here in Dahab to inform them of our plans and to ask for their support. Myself and other volunteer rangers then followed up on the emails by personally visiting the dive centres to see what kind of support we were likely to get on the day. We received very enthusiastic responses from the majority of dive centres. We then delivered posters to every dive centre and Wind Surfing Centre informing them of exactly what was going to be happening on the day of the clean and providing them with a map of where we would be (see below).

On the day: On the morning of the clean we set up camp under the shade of the date palms and started to clean from this point out whilst waiting for the arrival of the Bedouin children. Unfortunately due to the fact that there were 8 Bedouin weddings taking place that day NO Bedouin children turned up. So for the majority of the day it was a core group of people cleaning (myself, Bert, Sallah, Jenny, Tonje , Ashraf and his son Saif, Ayman, Jessica and Saad).

We were supported by: Reef 2000 - sent their staff and divers down to help with the clean.

Club Dahab sent their staff and customers down to help with the clean.

Dahab City Council organized for a bus full of children to come down and help us for the day.

Karin and Amr, the owners of Carm Inn restaurant provided food for everyone else and on top of that stayed for the afternoon to help with the clean.

The restaurant and bar at Blue Beach Hotel provided food and drinks for the children

Full Moon Café and Mary Cafe (located at Moray Gardens in Wadi ginai) both provided us with much needed cold drinks.

Dive Urge and Divers Down Under provided transport and water for the day.

Happy Life Village provided bags and drinks. Orca made a donation.

Results: We managed to clean over a 1.5 kilometre stretch of beach. We started just north of Happy Life Village and made it to about 300 metres before the first police check point (please see the map below). We were working over the area from the water line back to an average of 30 metres. So it was slow progress due to the fact there were not many of us and we had such a difficult area to clean (comprised of many thorny bushes).

Thanks to the very hard work of all those involved we managed to collect over 137 bags full of rubbish.

The rubbish was collected at 5.30pm by Hamaya, we managed to fill one of their trucks with rubbish bags. They took the rubbish away to be sorted into recyclables and non-recyclables.

Conclusion: The fact that we managed to clean such a large area with so few people amazes me and shows you how hard all these people worked. Due to the lack of manpower we were not able to clear very far back from the waters edge, but to give you an idea of the scale of this problem;

10 people (REEF 2000 divers) collected 17 huge bags of rubbish from one 100 metre stretch of the beach.

The information about the clean-up was passed on to many businesses so it was very surprising to get such a poor response on the day. Its obviously going to take a bit more effort to try and get Dahab working together as a community to look after its environment.

The area that we cleaned looked amazing at the end of the day; you could appreciate the natural beauty of the place because you were no longer focusing on plastic bags. Most of the rubbish we picked up was plastic especially plastic bags and also cement bags, both of these pose a lethal threat to the reefs as they end up in the sea lying on the reef table killing the reefs and their inhabitants. Turtles are particularly vulnerable to injury and possibly death by mistaking plastic bags for the jelly fish which they feed on.

I cannot overstate the enormity of the problem Wadi Ginai and the whole of Dahab faces with rubbish. It litters every street, every beach, every wadi and turns Dahab from an area of outstanding natural beauty into a rubbish pit. 

What we achieved on the 8th June was fantastic and we will carry on tackling problem areas of rubbish BUT the task is too big for us alone. We need Dahab city Council to take a more serious approach to tackling the problem of rubbish and its disposal, here in Dahab. They have managed to sort out the problem in Nuweiba and in Sharm El Sheikh so why not here in Dahab. If tourism is going to continue to grow here then this is an issue which the government needs to take seriously.