For the first time since we began the NG Plastics project was funded in 2021 by CINUK, our entire team has come together—in Makkovik, Nunatsiavut. The team is here to collect shoreline plastics and analyse them for types, sources, and amounts, which we can only do properly with local people. For three days, we’ve held community workshops with food, discussion, and lots of trash. We’ve found plastics that have washed up from Denmark, Italy, the USA, as well as oil cans from the 1960s, salmon tags from the 1980s, and wooden fish floats from around the 1950s. Most of our insights come from talking to Makkovimmiuk who know the land, and many people have brought us things that they have found on the shorelines, from soapstone carvings to bone tent pegs to buoys from Kuujjuak, Nunavik.
Each team member was asked about a highlight from our time here:
Liz Pijogge, Northern Contaminants Researcher, Nunatsiavut Government, Co-PI: “When we went out, from far away it looks like there is nothing on the beach , but close up, there is tons of trash. If everyone going off picked up one trash bag of waste, it would make a difference.”
Lauren Pilgrim, Youth participant and team photographer: The best part is “connecting with other people from other communities.” And in Makkovik, the “views are really nice,” especially the view from the gazebo.
Max Liboiron, Professor, Memorial University, Co-PI: Besides going out on boat, the highlight has been “all the people sharing their stories of what they find on shorelines and stories about items we’ve collected. There’s no way we could have known half of what we know now just using science.”
Alex Bond, Principal Curator of Birds, Natural History Museum, UK, Co-PI: A standout insight is “how different the different sites are, even though they aren’t far from one another.” When he does research in Australia, any number of beaches in his research sites will have similar plastics. He notes there is strong “local influence” on sites here, which requires thinking about the relationship between “picking a research site and research questions.”
Shan Zou, Senior Research Officer, National Research Council, Collaborator: The highlights have been “talking to people and knowing the history of the items” we’ve collected, as well as “working with the boat drivers, who took care of us on the island, on the boat, and when there were dolphins” they took the time to slow down and circle so we could see and photograph them. She notes people have been “open and generous, sharing their knowledge and explaining things.”
Zoltan Mester, Principal Research Officer, National Research Council, Collaborator: “As a lab scientist, the shape of the problems are post-sampling, so we see a sub-set of the problem” and we concentrate on “high precision measurement. It’s shocking to see the scope of the question” when we work on land and water. “Where to sample, how to sample, how to define a square meter” are very different questions than questions of “one to two percent bias” in the lab.
Laura Crick, Postdoc, Natural History Museum, UK: Something that stuck out has been “the range of items we found, especially older things. British beaches have different plastics, though both shores have Coke. It’s been interesting to talk to local folks and learning about unusual things, like the balloon” that an Elder found that came from a school in Iowa.
