More than 50 volunteers braved the tricky terrain of a picturesque stone beach as they removed mounds of rubbish during a massive clean-up project.
The group turned out to help tidy North Haven, near Bullers of Buchan, as part of an environmental campaign.
Organised by East Grampian Coastal Partnership (EGCP), the event ran from 10am until 2pm yesterday.
Half the team consisted of staff and volunteers from the Siemens communication firm in Aberdeen, who joined in for the Turning the Plastic Tide project.
The initiative encourages the public to help tackle the blight of marine litter along the coast between Fraserburgh and East Haven in Angus.
Crawford Paris, beach team officer for EGCP, said: “We had a fantastic turnout with 55 people in total – which made it the largest beach clean of a remote stone beach.
“Siemens provided half the volunteers and are interested in doing more of these kind of community efforts.
“On the morning we saw about 20 more people coming off a bus. They were from the Living Waters Community Church in Peterhead.
“They were groups of missionaries from Pennsylvania in America, who turned out to help.”
Mr Paris said 165lb of rubbish was collected in total, with the majority of the haul being fishing nets and fishing rope.
The most “worrying” item the team came across were oil containers which still had oil in them.
Mr Paris added: “There weren’t many unusual items, like you usually get during beach cleans.
“There were a few fishing nets and fishing ropes. The most worrying were these oil containers that still had oil in them.
“The litter has been a terrible eyesore and being able to remove it has made it a lot better for the area.
“With the team that we had we were able to finish an hour early.
“It was all thanks to the volunteer power we had on the day.”
The beach team officer said tackling these remote beaches can be “difficult”.
He added: “It feels good to be able to get beaches cleaned and looking how they’re supposed to always look.
“It was amazing and we’re really grateful to everyone who showed up to help.”
