THE Jamaica Environment Trust is testing a structure at the mouth of the south gully in Montego Bay, which it hopes will reduce the amount of plastic bottles and other floating debris that enters the sea and ends up choking beaches and potentially harming marine animals.

It’s called a debris containment boom and is made with used five-gallon water bottles and fishing nets that etend three feet down into the water column, and which are anchored to the seafloor.

JET CEO Diana MaCaulay was cautious about speaking to the results of the project to date, pointing out that it is still in pilot stage particularly because there has not been any significant rain events since the boom was installed in late May.

“Indications are that it certainly will work in non-storm conditions. It reduced the amount of floating waste which we see so if it holds up in storm conditions then I think we’ll have a solution for small gulllies,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

The Montego Bay Marine Park, in which the gully mouth falls, monitors and clears the boom every other week or so.

“In the absence of a rain event, they are collectiong between 50 and70 lbs of plastic a week. As you know, plastic is very light so that doesn’t sound like much, but it’s quite a big pile of plastic and it would have gone to sea and washed up on some other beach or ended up on a coral reef or something like that,” MaCaulay said.

In addition to that, anecdotal information from people who live and work in the area suggests that the water quality on the sea side of the boom has improved, and that there are more fish. But MacCaulay is not prepared to accept the arguments without the requisite scientific testing.

MaCaulay said JET has been searching for years for a solution to the amount of garbage washed down from gullies into the sea, but the proposals have either been too expensive or have been flood hazards.

The boom was designed by two marine biologists who work with JET — Llewelyn Megs and Jaden Lawe.

Meanwhile, JET last week launched International Coastal Clean-up 2015, which will take place on September 19. It will be seeking to attract more than 10,000 volunteers islandwide, which should put Jamaica in the top 10 in terms of the size of the national response.

Last year, with 7,400 volunteers who bagged over 85,000 lbs of waste, the country ranked 12 out of the 91 countries that participated in the global one-day activity. That compares to 560,000 volunteers and 16 million lbs of waste, worldwide.

ICC is an initiative of the Ocean Conservancy. JET is national coordinator for Jamaica.

Both ICC and the Clean Coasts Project, under which the boom pilot falls, are sponsored by the Tourism Enhancement Fund.

— Kimone Thompson