Håkon Strande went for a ‘Little’ walk. A very long one.
The 55-year-old circumnavigated 23 miles of Little Cayman’s shoreline to raise awareness of the plastic-pollution problem and to raise money for charities that are trying to tackle it.
So far, he has raised $2,650 for Plastic Free Cayman and the Little Cayman District Committee of the National Trust.
He told the Compass that last year he raised money for the charities by inviting people to sponsor each pound of plastic he removed from Point of Sand beach. This year, he wanted to do something different.
“I thought about doing a video as I walk along and shoot how much plastic there is in the area, but thought that wasn’t very challenging, unique or hard. Instead, how about I go along every piece of the shoreline around the whole islands in one go?” he said.
So, one pre-dawn morning in February, he set out from Point of Sand, and filmed the entirety of his 9-hour, 12-minute hike on his GoPro, which he wore on his head, to highlight how much plastic has washed up along the coastline of the idyllic little island.
The video footage, sped up 30 times, shows Strande starting off in the dark, at 6am, and finishing back there at 3:12pm – with a stop for a burger for lunch at Kingston Bight.
Along the way, the video shows him traversing sandy beaches, ironshore, mangrove areas and rocky shoals; changing from his hiking boots and socks to water shoes and back again to cross the next challenging terrain; and putting bandages on his blistered feet.
But perhaps the most striking thing the video shows in its speedy images is the many flashes of alien colours among the white sand or grey rocks – the colourful reds, greens, blues or oranges of the plastic debris that is visible all around the island’s shores.
All three islands in Cayman, and many more around the world, are plagued by the influx of ocean plastics – something Strande wants to educate people about.
On a fundraising social media page, before setting out on his trek, he said, “The shorelines around the world are filling up with plastic garbage, in large part from struggling nations where waste management solutions are lacking. On Little Cayman, in the path of trade winds from the Caribbean islands to the east, we get our fair share of this scourge.
“Having found Little Cayman, this pearl of a place, and seen the difference activism can make – at least towards the symptoms of the problem – with cleaner beaches and shores around the island through volunteerism and organised shore line cleanups, I want to go the extra mile (pun intended) and raise money for further efforts.”
Strande, a Norwegian national, is a member of the National Trust who regularly removes plastic from Little Cayman’s beaches, including at the monthly full moon plastic clean-ups.
He noted that over approximately the past 10 years of these clean-ups, tens of tons of ocean plastic have been removed from the shores of Little Cayman.
He did most of the trek on foot, although he did have to paddle a kayak along the mangrove-fringed area of South Hole Sound.
Being a seasoned hiker, who has trekked in Norway and in the US – he now lives in Minnesota after moving from Seattle, Washington – he says, “The number one rule is you never get your feet wet,” so he packed spare socks.
“I thought the only place where the vegetation has grown so far out to the shore where you have to wade past them was at the South Sound mangroves. But I was wrong about there. There were a couple of places early on where I had to get in the water.
“I had two pairs of socks, some water shoes or waders, and my hiking shoes. A couple of times, I thought I could make it by bouncing from rock to rock in my hiking shoes but ended up getting wet, so I got some blisters.”
He tried drying his socks by just waving them around as he walked but that didn’t prove to be an effective method, he admits.
About half way through his walk, as he was manoeuvring over some tricky ironshore, he found a “beautiful” wooden stick which became his walking pole for the rest of the hike.
He’s kept the stick, which he had sanded and lacquered, and which he plans to auction at the National Trust 30th annual Easter auction on Saturday, 8 April.
Donations are still being accepted for Strande’s walk, at the Little Walk Go Fund Me and Bonfire pages.
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