10-Mile Collective launched their first marine art exhibition

A group led by an Esperance mother and daughter is raising money for ocean conservation by turning marine debris into works of art.

Transcript

00:00 Esperance is world famous for its pristine beaches,

00:04 but it's not immune from plastic pollution.

00:07 We'll come out here sometimes and spend hours

00:10 just in a 10-metre square kind of radius.

00:13 Local mother and daughter, Michelle and Sam Crisp,

00:16 come to Ten Mile Lagoon almost every day to pick up rubbish.

00:19 But one day last year, they got more than they bargained for.

00:23 Here's this huge whale carcass-sized beach,

00:26 piece of marine debris down the end of the beach,

00:30 and yeah, that was the start.

00:32 It's probably from a longline fishing vessel,

00:34 so it was huge amounts of various-sized rope.

00:37 The community rallied to get it off the beach,

00:40 but deciding what to do with it proved harder.

00:43 Definitely super important not to just put the five tonnes

00:46 of marine debris directly into landfill.

00:49 That's just contributing to a different kind of issue

00:52 in a different landscape.

00:53 We thought this is an ideal opportunity to make it a community project.

00:57 So we've been feverishly making baskets,

01:00 and we've been making... Sam's made a gorgeous hat.

01:03 Hat. We made earrings.

01:05 They've also visited schools and gone to local markets

01:08 to teach others.

01:09 This week, they opened an exhibition to raise funds

01:12 for marine conservation group Tangaroa Blue.

01:15 When I walked through that door and I saw that colour,

01:18 I thought, "Wow, this is the Esperance colours."

01:20 I think it's absolutely fantastic, and I think it's a real wake-up call

01:24 to us all.

01:25 They raised $1,500 for the non-profit on opening night.

01:29 Quite often, environmental issues these days can be quite overwhelming.

01:33 So to have a local issue like this and quite a simple, feasible solution

01:37 to it, it's so epic to have the whole community engaged.

01:42 The exhibition will run for the next four weeks.

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