Coast Watch Report

As everybody knows, a class outside the classroom is always a reason for happiness for students. Although we sometimes hide how delighted we feel when we visit a place with our school mates, we really feel as if it is going to be the best class of the whole year. Apparently this is the only visit we will make this year, however, it was worthwhile.

Last Friday morning, 9th March, we went to Vila Praia de Ancora and walked along the coast line towards Moledo. The idea was to analyse the geological panorama of the coast as well as to identify the impact of pollution and men’s activity in that area. We wrote everything that was relevant on a guideline quiz, which we gave to our biology and geology teacher. The quiz included some questions about the pollution near the sea and the geologically affected areas. We saw a cliff that was in serious danger of crumbling and we noticed there were traces of human activity in the most incredible places. We found things like bottles, strings, plastic packages, bags, sponges and even pieces of clothes.

While we were walking among the rocks near the water, we couldn’t avoid looking at the sea! It was such a fabulous view. However, that didn’t distract us from our purpose. We put all our efforts on the geology activity and we hope the result of our research will be good enough.

In this international activity, called Coast Watch, it is our biggest responsibility to make everything right. The Coast Watch is a project that includes 23 countries, and among them are United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, Spain, and Portugal of course. In our opinion, Portugal is a country with the ideal conditions for this kind of project because our coastline is more than 1230 km long. On the one hand this is very good for tourism, and some regions of our country are completely dependent on this economic activity. But on the other hand there is a lot of places in danger, as result of the intensive human construction in the past decades.


These projects like Coast Watch are essential to alert people to the necessity of preserving the coastline as much as we can. That day we played our role and helped protect the environment with the means we can afford.
                 
Ana Luís Vasconcelos, Barbara Rodrigues, João Pinheiro,
João Gonçalves, Ricardo Pereira (11º A)

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