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Paddle For Plastic

The Paddle for Plastic campaign was launched by Rob Thompson, the founder and former chair of Fathoms Free and Director of Odyssey Innovation, to recover and recycle plastic from these otherwise inaccessible places, and in doing so, to raise awareness to the scale of the problem. It is a regular occurrence that we launch from a clean public access beach and only make it a couple of hundred meters away from civilization before gathering such large quantities of marine plastic that we have to turn back with it. It’s really important to keep these inaccessible places clean, as the lack of human activity often make them a haven for wildlife, this increases the risk to wildlife of entanglement in, or ingestion of plastic even further.


Now we need your help to rid our seas of marine plastic. Please help us by joining a Paddle for Plastic event, or alternatively, do your own paddle for plastic. It can be a simple as taking a few minutes to give something back to nature, by picking up some litter on your return paddling journey. You can paddle on kayaks, stand up paddle board, surfboards, boats or anything you can think of to reach those otherwise inaccessible places to clear marine debris. We would love to hear about your paddle for plastic adventures! Please share your stories or photos with us on social media in the hope that your work may inspire others to take action.

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Sadly, mountains of marine litter collected from our public beaches is now a familiar sight. Worryingly, it is only a minor representation of the scale of the problem.

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​One of the main challenges to the collection of marine litter is access, as a vast percentage of our coastline is inaccessible by foot and therefore never gets cleaned. This is why Fathoms Free volunteers go out on these awesome recycled ocean plastic kayaks to clean up hard-to-reach areas as part of the Paddle for Plastic campaign.

Now we need your help to rid our seas of marine plastic. Please help us by joining a Paddle for Plastic event, or alternatively, do your own paddle for plastic. It can be a simple as taking a few minutes to give something back to nature, by picking up some litter on your return paddling journey. You can paddle on kayaks, stand up paddle board, surfboards, boats or anything you can think of to reach those otherwise inaccessible places to clear marine debris. We would love to hear about your paddle for plastic adventures! Please share your stories or photos with us on social media in the hope that your work may inspire others to take action.

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Fathoms Free is a group of volunteer divers who protect marine wildlife and the environment for everyone's benefit by removing ALDFG (abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear) and other marine debris from the coastal waters of Cornwall and Devon.

ALDFG is also known as ghost gear or ghost fishing gear, as it continues to "fish," entangling, trapping, and killing wildlife indiscriminately. These trapped animals will die and act as bait, attracting more wildlife in a vicious cycle of death until the ghost gear is removed from the environment.

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Fathoms free are a registered charity.

UK charity number 1192613

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