Two minutes

Anglers see more of the tideline than almost anyone. We are on it at first light and last, at the top of the spring and the bottom of the neap, in the gullies and the weed and the places nobody walks. Which means we see the marine litter along Ireland’s shoreline more clearly than most — and it means we are unusually well placed to do something about it.

Take a little time, every time you go, and do a two-minute beach clean. Two minutes. Fill your hands on the way back to the car. Photograph what you picked up and post it with the hashtags #cleancoasts and #2minutebeachclean, and say where you were. Then dispose of it properly — recycle what can be recycled, bin the rest.

It works on the same arithmetic as everything else worth doing on a coast: one person achieves very little, and everybody doing a small thing achieves a great deal. Every piece of litter taken off the shore is a piece that will not end up in the water or inside something living in it.

Whose idea this is

The two-minute beach clean came from Martin Dorey, a writer and surfer in Cornwall, who got tired of feeling that picking up litter on his own was pointless and started asking other people to post what they had collected. It spread, as good simple ideas do, and it now belongs to everybody.

Clean Coasts engages communities in the protection of Ireland’s beaches, seas and marine life, and runs the idea here. The programme is operated by the Environmental Education Unit of An Taisce, and there are Clean Coasts groups working right around the Irish coast — including this one.

Be sensible about it. A tideline is not a tidy place, and some of what washes up should be left alone and reported rather than picked up. Check their safety guidance before you start filling your pockets.

This sits alongside everything else in the principles I fish by — and it is the easiest of the lot to actually do.