Kayaking skills holiday in Ionian Islands, Greece

Planet

There are a number of fish farms near the mainland east of Ithaca which send a polystyrene debris towards the island. These are driven by the strong winter easterly winds. There is a beautiful remote beach which is particularly affected and has a layer of broken down polystyrene small bubbles under the stones that will take some time and patience to clean up. During the summer, we run several responsibly guided kayaking tours to this beach to do clean ups. It is important to catch the large pieces of polystyrene when they get to the beach before they start the breaking down process. Together with our diving buddies we keep a close eye on this beach and always do clean ups when we visit.

Our clean ups don't just stop at polystyrene. We focus also on removing materials that can cause harm to marine life. Items such as pieces of fishing nets, straws, plastic hoops for beer and soda cans, and any other pieces whose shape could represent the risk of entanglement.

Although we would love to use refill bottles for water, there have been some issues with the purity of the desalinated drinking water that the island uses. Our partners, who are members of the tourist board and other important government bodies of the island are lobbying central government to obtain funds to put in place a solution.

As a kayaking break, we really have a very tiny carbon footprint.
The island is small so any transfers are done in a group and for a short distance.

People

Working together with our local partner we have set up a training program for local youth who want to develop their kayaking and guiding skills. The first got his UK qualifications in November 2018. Therefore, we invite them to join us in some paddles and give them training. It is specially important for them to work with clients and use their English to become more fluent.

On an ad-hoc basis we invite local youth to kayak with us and enjoy their beautiful island from the sea in a way which they don't get to do often. This helps them gain appreciation for their sea environment and see, first hand, how the use of certain plastics such as bags, straws, lighters and many other objects can pollute the water and beaches and cause harm to sea life. We hope they become ambassadors for their environment and take enthusiasm and new way of doing things back to their communities.

During this trip, we work with locally family owned hotels, we visit small restaurants and use the services of many other small local businesses such as taxi drivers, transfer companies, local guides , bakeries and the local farmer as well as the greengrocer. The island has visitors only a few months of the year, so bringing and purchasing across many business is important for the long term economy.