The plastic tsunami: pollution across Australia's coastlines – in pictures
With Australia’s beaches and oceans covered in rubbish, Tangaroa Blue volunteers spend days trying to clean things up. While these images are not beautiful or professionally taken, they are the harsh reality of the world’s plastic pollution problem.
• ‘Plastic is literally everywhere’: the epidemic attacking Australia’s oceans
-
The vast amount of plastic collected at Back Beach in Mapoon, Queensland.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
Coral growing around a plastic bottle found at Cape Kimberley in Queensland.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
Melbourne’s Yarra river is filled with plastic rubbish.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
Plastic found at Cape Kimberley in Queensland.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
-
A beach at Byfield national park in Yeppoon, Queensland, is polluted with garbage.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
Plastic wrapped around a branch on the Torres Strait Islands.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
Microplastics found washed up at Cape York in Queensland.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
In 2013, Tangaroo Blue volunteers did a ‘clean sweep’ of the 7km Chilli beach and gathered 5.5 tonnes of material.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
-
A pelican entangled in ghost nets found on Cardwell foreshore beach in Queensland.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
Abandoned marine debris found south of the Lockhart river in Cape York, Queensland.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
The waters surrounding Flying Fish Cove, the capital of Christmas Island, are strewn with garbage.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
Plastic bags in the ocean off the coast of Western Australia.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
-
-
A large piece of plastic hangs from a rock in Newcastle.Photograph: Tangaroa Blue
