A local group of environmental volunteers are appealing for information after thousands of plastic bottles containing Gospel tracts have been dumped in the River Bann in recent years.
Perhaps the person or group responsible were aiming to deliver a "message in a bottle", but for nature and the volunteers who diligently work hard to care for it, the message of 'Good News' has been lost by its bad delivery.
Based in Coleraine, Sea2it works to bring together community groups and individuals as volunteers "to tackle Northern Ireland's blight of marine and freshwater litter".
A spokesperson for Sea2it appealed for help in finding the person or group responsible, asking:
"Would any of the Coleraine churches know who is dumping Bible messages in plastic bottles into the River Bann at Coleraine on this industrial scale?"
Continuing, the spokesperson said:
"Whatever your beliefs or reason you have to spread the Word of God, this act is littering our beautiful River.
"Sea2it volunteers have been removing these bottles for years now and collected a shocking 670 of these bottles with messages in them in 2023. Unfortunately, again, a fresh 2024 batch seems to have been released into the river over the New Year."
Sea2it members usually discover the bottles downstream from the Old Town Bridge in Coleraine, and believe the person responsible must be dumping them into the river from the area around Dunnes Stores, the footbridge or the Waterside area of the town.
Sea2it are now asking those responsible to stop and consider the impact of their actions on the river, and the local environment.
"Please can you stop doing this as it pollutes our river and is tying up 100's of hours of our volunteer time to remove them when we could be tackling other immediate issues which are impacting on the river.
"If any local church group wishes to help with a clean up of our local river and address this blight, please contact us at info@sea2it.org."
For more information please visit www.sea2it.org