// September 11, 2022
Pirate Action on the Elbe beach
The oyster "Merle with the pearl" or "Microplastics - such a shit!"
The Live To Love Pirates know the worries of mussels and fish and came together for the sixth time this weekend on the Elbe beach in Övelgönne to draw attention to the dangers of microplastics for life on earth. Almost 50 highly ambitious children signed up today as Live To Love pirates - simply great!
The oyster "Merle" had appeared especially for this visit to explain to the pirates in an interactive dialogue what consequences microplastics have for the environment, for animals and for people.
Mussels filter around 200 liters of water a day. They clean the water in rivers and oceans and absorb all the pollutants of concern. They also cannot get rid of the microplastics they ingest - "Merle" therefore advised the young pirates to rather do without mussels in the food chain.
This time, the children were also on the road as climate ambassadors: the fact that plastic massively damages the climate has unfortunately not yet sunk deep enough into people's consciousness.
For example, plankton absorbs microplastics - in addition to the increased water temperatures of recent times, this leads to an increased algae bloom - which then in turn consume the oxygen from rivers and lakes. For the fish this is a dangerous situation, since they depend on the vital oxygen. Without oxygen, there is no life.
With this in mind, the pirates fished plastic from the Elbe River from three boats and took water samples at various locations in the harbor and between the container ships.
- By the way: seeing these gigantic container ships up close was a great experience for everyone - .
The water samples were then later checked on land with test strips for the content of oxygen and the ph-value.
Unfortunately, our suspicions were confirmed: the results clearly showed that there is too little active oxygen in this area of the Elbe.
An emphatic experience for all children and adults!
Simultaneously to the trip on the boats, some groups of children were super committed to sifting the sand and again found lots of toxic cigarette butts and many tiny and very tiny pieces of plastic.
Riesengroße Freude bereitete den Kindern auch das Quiz - und natürlich die Schatzsuche! Eine Kiste war in diesem Jahr so tief vergraben, dass es viel Mühe erforderte, sie zu finden.
Doch echte Piraten geben nicht auf - die Kiste wurde schließlich doch noch entdeckt – gefüllt mit lauter Sachen, die Kinder gewöhnlich sehr zu schätzen wissen.
Zum Abschluss wurde die gesamte Beute traditionell am Piratenschiff gewogen - Wow! 15 Kilogramm MIKRO-Plastik wurde gesammelt. Diese Arbeit erfordert sehr viel Konzentration und Geduld und ist eine echte Leistung. Unsere Anerkennung und Freude für Euren fleissigen Einsatz. Wir sind super stolz auf jede:n einzelne:n von euch!
Thank you
From the bottom of our hearts, many thanks to Gyde Thönessen, her father Rainer and Björn from Museumshafen for generously providing the boats! This mutiny will go down in history and definitely remain in our memories! By the way, next weekend is Hamburg's harbor birthday and the Museumshafen has come up with a great program for kids. On Saturday there are many creative games around the Elbe and the ships. We can only warmly recommend it!
An extremely inspiring day is coming to an end. We spent many hours in the fresh air - it smells of the sea here. The Elbe, the seagulls, the passing boats - so many beautiful encounters with wonderful people. Young and old. Happy dogs. We go into the evening very fulfilled and grateful for every moment of this Sunday.
In October and November we continue our climate protection activities on land and plant many trees! We will also reforest a part of the Klövensteen with thousands of heisters.
Of course we will inform you about this in time.
Warm regards
Your Live To Love Team
