Genesis fishing boat debris Orkney, Digi Mart USA News (Orkney, Scotland): Volunteers have been collecting truckloads of debris washed ashore from a fishing boat that ran aground and dramatically smashed apart off the west coast of Orkney.
The Genesis fishing boat struck rocks off the west coast of the island of Hoy on October 1. All seventeen members of its crew were airlifted to safety.
Since then, fishing boxes, pallets and parts of the vessel itself have been washing up along the coastline, buffeted by recent storms. Items also include personal belongings such as welly boots, thought to have belonged to crew members.
Those picking up debris at Rackwick Bay told the BBC they will be finding parts of the wreckage for “months or years to come.”
The week after the grounding, Hannah Findlay was walking her dog near Skail, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Hoy, when she saw many green fishing boxes strewn across the beach. “I thought, ‘Right, well I’ve got to do something about this,'” she told BBC Scotland.
“The sea can be really ferocious here and it’s just smashing it against the rocks – the stuff is just breaking up,” she said. On the first day, she collected around 30 or 40 boxes, then enlisted a friend to continue the work and joined other volunteers along the coast.
Findlay said teams were beginning to see the “innards” of the boat, including wooden structures and bunks as well as more unusual items. “We were just chatting this morning about how much Sellotape we have been finding, and that’s got to be coming off this boat,” she said.
“Most of what was on there we’ll be finding for months or years to come.”
Last week, during calm weather, a team of volunteers was able to venture close to the wreckage site, using a boat and a smaller rigid inflatable boat (RIB) to reach land.
All the collected waste has been loaded onto a trailer and taken to a waste center on Orkney’s mainland.
Alan Tulloch told BBC Scotland News that there is so much plastic it is visible from planes, and that recent storms have buried debris that will wash up in time. He said, “The majority of the material is still there.
Thousands of bits of now pretty broken up plastics. There are ropes and lines and bits of the cabins too.
“It’s extremely inaccessible, you are straight into the Atlantic. There are rocks the size of transit vans.
We are just trying to gather as much as we possibly can. It’s going to be a long process.”
The Genesis was left stranded on rocks after the incident and was subsequently battered by heavy seas, with footage showing the vessel breaking apart. HM Coastguard previously said the amount of diesel on board was believed to be minimal, while its counter-pollution team was liaising with the vessel’s owner and relevant authorities over potential salvage.
All 17 crew members were rescued without injury. Four of the vessel’s crew were from Spain and have returned home.
The other crew members are from Indonesia and have also left the island.
