Cleaning the river mouth in Mythimna

Yesterday the Kissamos Beach Cleaning team gathered in Mythimna beach to clean the surrounding area.

From previous inspections, the mouth of the river between Mythimna and Nopigia looked like a good place to find a good amount of rubbish.

About 15 people met at Mythimna campsite, including a few new recruits, which we were very happy to see. From there, we proceeded East, direction Nopigia.

We cleaned the narrow, stony beach as we moved along, and observed the few holiday houses and the wall right behind the beach. Last year, this was a hotspot for sea turtles, with many of them nesting right against the wall at the back of the beach. This part of the coastline was relatively clean.

When we hit the river mouth, we found our treasure. A lot of rubbish was scattered all around. Some clearly pushed to the back of the beach by heavy machines. A lot of plastic bits, bottles, bags and tarballs all over the place.

The river itself had lots of green algal bloom, a typical sign of eutrophication. It always hosts birds (gulls, herons, swifts) and other wildlife, as it’s the only river in Kissamos bay that keeps flowing to the sea all year round, albeit very weakly in the summer.

In the end, we picked up about 20 bags of rubbish. We cleaned a small local nature hotspot, and a member of our team even rescued two puppies that had been abandoned by the bins!

We thank the Municipality of Kissamos for the support. Again, they provided big bin bags and made sure that the bags we deposited at the municipal bins were collected straight away by the rubbish truck, which came as we were leaving.

Till next time!