Young police volunteers were joined by Ardrossan Coastguard Rescue Team during a beach clean last week.
The coastguard was on incident prevention patrol to assist the North Ayrshire Police Scotland Youth Volunteers (PSYV) at Ardrossan beach and to provide a safety input on maritime distress flares and ordnance.
A spokesperson for the coastguard said: “The team is supporting the campaign to keep our beaches clean and the worldwide effort to rid the seas and oceans of plastic pollution. Plastic affects marine animals by physically tangling them leading to injury, distress, ingestion and drowning and it is estimated there are now 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre of the world’s oceans.
"Community Action Groups taking part in beach cleans are playing their part in keeping our shorelines and seas free of plastic litter and we want to help make sure these events take place as safely as possible and help mitigate the risk of discovering time expired maritime distress flares of possible ordnance.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here