Reporting by Grahame Lloyd - Remote Marine Debris Campaigner.

The IRCCP supports Indigenous ranger teams, Traditional Owners, and Communities from across the North to combat the ever-growing issue of ghost nets and marine debris on coastal Sea Country. They do this by suppling direct investment into Indigenous Ranger programs through a fee-for-service model that delivers funds and resources to aid clean ups.

This direct investment has supported local jobs, economic opportunities, and economic growth within communities, and has been wildly successful - to date the project has removed over 140,000 kgs or 1100 cubic meters of marine debris, and around 800 ghost nets from Sea Country.

We started to strengthen our relationship with Bruce, Dale and the rest of the IRCCP team when we meet them in person at the annual Clean Up Groote Eylandt Day in 2022 on the amazing Groote Eylandt. This clean-up is run by the Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers and supported by The Indigenous Rangers Coastal Clean-up Project. From the minute our teams meet and started talking about the work we were both doing to tackle the plastic pollution problem and assist Indigenous ranger groups and their communities to clean up these remote beaches, our relationship started to blossom.

One of the other great tools the IRCCP has developed for the ranger groups is the Ranger App, which allows ranger groups to scan the barcodes of any products they find as marine trash in order to identify the product and country of origin, and build a data base that they can use to when undertaking in conversations with countries whose products are polluting our coastline. There is also a function within the app that assists in identifying nets to help tackle the issue of ghost nets at the source of origin.

After our first meeting, we stayed in touch on a regular basis to talk about which Indigenous ranger groups Sea Shepherd Australia could start working with in our efforts to tackle the amount of plastic pollution in Northern Australia - particularly the Gulf of Carpentaria, which has long been identified as a global hotspot for marine debris. One of the key components of the grants is the funding of nine full-time positions within the ranger teams to coordinate and facilitate clean-ups, education, and a raft of other initiatives to drive action on the issue. So, with the funding in place to support additional positions in the ranger groups, we started reaching out to expand on the work we were already been doing with the Dhimurru and Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers.

After discussions with the Ghost Nets team, we decided to reach out to the Mapoon Land and Sea Rangers. We were interested to see what level of inundation was on the QLD side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and with the feedback coming in on the incredible work this ranger group was doing, we couldn't wait to arrive at Mapoon in March 2023. We are lucky to have now conducted two clean ups with the Mapoon rangers at two very different locations, and planning is already under way for next year's collaboration.

In October 2022, the Director of National Parks launched the Ghost Nets Innovative Solutions Grants Program. These grants were designed to support innovative and inspiring projects that will help address the ghost net and marine debris problem across Northern Australia. We decided to throw our hat in the ring and pull together a project to fund our clean-ups with both the Dhimurru and Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers for the following two years, with the idea that if we were successful this would then allow us to further expand our boots-on-the-ground approach, assisting even more of the ranger groups whose sacred shorelines are drowning in a never-ending wave of plastic pollution being delivered to their door step.

I am pleased to say we were successful with our application, and under the Ghost Net Innovative Solutions Grant we were able to conduct four clean-ups over the last two years - two with the Anindilyakwa Land and Sea Rangers, and two with the Dhimurru Rangers. This enabled us to remove a staggering 30 tonnes making this our most successful collaboration yet. Not only has the Indigenous Rangers Coastal Cleanup Project provided necessary funding to both the ranger groups and Sea Shepherd to conduct these cleans, they have also sent their team along to join us on five of these cleans so far.

Thanks to this funding we have been able to redirect funds kindly donated by our grassroots supporters to launch another two additional remote clean-ups in Northern Australia. This means we are now assisting the Dhimurru, Anandilyakwa, Mapoon, Tiwi, and Gumurr Marthakal Rangers and their communities in cleaning up their remote coastlines.

We have planned to add an additional two clean-ups to our calendar for next year, but uncertainty with the future of funding for The Indigenous Rangers Coastal Clean-up Project means this may not be possible. This funding is vital to the ongoing success, impact, and reach of our remote clean-ups.

We call on Minister Tanya Plibersek and the Australian Government to commit to funding the Indigenous Rangers Coastal Clean-up Project into the future, as the current funding ends in June 2025. If this project's funding is not continued, then the nine full-time positions that are currently funded will no longer be able to be supported - resulting in the loss of jobs and critical resourcing to combat the ongoing issue of plastic pollution choking our northern shores. This also affects Sea Shepherd's efforts to support ranger groups, as they will no longer have the staff or funding of the IRCCP to provide the necessary equipment for these collaborative cleans.

The Indigenous Rangers Coastal Clean-up Project is demonstratively valuable to Indigenous communities, ranger groups and vital marine habitats - it's a clear-cut win for both people and planet to continue investing in this program.