Surfers Against Sewage Visit ASC Portland 

As part of their recent Sustainability Series at ASC Portland, Wey Valley Academy had the incredible opportunity to learn all about pollution from the amazing team at Surfers Against Sewage.  

Wey Valley Academy have been taking part in the six-week ASC Sustainability Series that aims to give young people a toolkit of knowledge to help them make planet friendly choices. We focus on solutions and encourage participants to get creative in thinking of ways they can combat nature challenges. As part of this the students got to head out on the water and investigate water quality, testing for nutrients as an indicator for sewage outflows and agricultural runoff. They got hands on collecting water samples around the harbour and headed back to our mini ‘lab’ to test them for phosphates and nitrates! 

Lizzie, the Community Water Quality Officer for Surfers Against Sewage, joined us for this session delivering an additional hour-long workshop giving the students an in-depth insight into all the amazing work Surfers Against Sewage are doing and why it is so important. We looked at our local sewage outflows and when they last discharged. Luckily for us, the ones in the harbour hadn’t been active and aren’t used often!  

The students also got an insight into the interconnected system of our rivers and inland waterways and how the health of these can directly impact the health of the oceans. They enjoyed looking at all of the different outflows and seeing how recently they had been used. Lizzie chatted through why sewage was dumped in the sea and how this can actually be affected by the weather!  

All of our workshops aim to be solutions focused and hopeful so of course the participants learnt how they make a difference! We focused on using your voice and citizen science for this. Everyone got creative making posters to help people understand the issues they had learnt about and why they were important. It was amazing to see everyone really engaged and creating some amazing posters, check out the photos for what they came up with.  

Citizen science was another way that the participants learnt to help protect the oceans. We headed out on the water and collected samples in three different locations: Castle Cove, the mid harbour and the marina. They learnt science fieldwork skills and got to look for signs of pollution first hand, although we didn’t see many!  

Back on shore we tested the water samples for nutrients which are a good indicator of sewage pollution as well as agricultural runoff. Even with the large volume of rain we have had over the last few weeks the water samples indicated very good water quality in all the locations we tested!  

The full session gave the students a complete picture of sewage pollution in our waterways. It was amazing to hear all about the incredible work done by Surfers Against Sewage and for young people who live on the coasts to get involved and contribute to a data set that will help drive research and policy.  

We are looking forward to continuing to work with Lizzie and Surfers Against Sewage with her visiting for future sessions. Her next visit within the Andrew Simpson Foundation is to Horizon’s Children’s Charity in Plymouth later this month as part of their winter series!  

If you know a group or school that would love to get out and learn more about nature and Sustainability, drop your local centre an email and find out more about our Sustainability Programme. 

by Holly Jones, Senior Instructor at ASC Portland

Holly studied marine biology and oceanography at university and has experience working in marine conservation and scientific research. This allows her to give the students a thorough insight into the field and answer lots of the questions they might have during the sessions. She is passionate about showing young people the incredible biodiversity we have here in the UK and why it is important to protect these areas. She hopes this programme will encourage young people to take an active role in combating environmental issues.