A few days ago we found a lovely unnamed anchorage along the southern coastline of Pserimos. The bottom is sand with good holding and there is only the sound of goat bells for company and the twinkling of the lights across the channel to Kos at night.
Our good friends, Ian and Jenny were sailing with us and at sunset Jenny SUP’ped to shore to walk along the beach. She came back to Lady Roslyn with a selection of plastic trash she had found littering the beach.
In the morning, Ian and I took the SUP’s to shore and found a cave to explore. The “treasure” we found inside cave was not gold.
If you have read a few of our previous posts about polystyrene, you will know that it is a real problem here in the Mediterranean. Inside the cave, we were able to see just how bad the problem is, not at a macro level, but at a micro level.
There were the usual big pieces of polystyrene and plastic trash in the cave, enough to fill 4 big bin bags. However, as we picked up the smaller and smaller pieces, the base of the cave became exposed and it was incredible and sad to see a carpet of white polystyrene balls lining the floor of the cave. Thousands upon thousands of balls which had been broken down from larger pieces by UV, wind and wave action, ready to be blown out to sea again for birds, fish and turtles to consume at their peril.
We collected as much of it as we could and swept the beach again for the last few pieces of plastic and bottle tops that we could find. All in all the biggest haul of plastic trash we have removed from one location this season.
Anyone still out sailing the Dodecanese will find this anchorage pristine and well worth the stop.
