Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - A dozen volunteers removed two puck-up truck loads of debris, from the beach between Hollyhock and Seaford, on Mother’s Day. “Cortes Island has been the beneficiary of a big clean up that was sponsored by the federal and provincial governments last year, where they put eco-tour ships and they're out of work crews to work cleaning the beaches all the way up to the central coast,” explained Mike Moore, one of the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) volunteers.“I had friends that were working out of the Goose Group and the west coast of Vancouver Island and the inside passage here. Spirit of the West worked the north and west side of Cortes Island and another group out of the Sunshine Coast worked the east coast of Cortes Island.” Moore spoke to the need to keep cleaning this beach.“We've had a winter's worth of storms, blowing things up, and this beach that we're working today from Hollyhock, basically up to Seascape Road. this is a huge collector facing the Southeast, the open straight of Georgia with Victoria, east Vancouver Island and all the Sunshine Coast communities. Anything that gets put in the water ends up right about here.”There were isolated strands of rope, plastics and other debris, but the beach initially seemed relatively clean and expectations were initially low. That was before some of the volunteers found piles of styrofoam, aquaculture debris and tires.After the work was finished, the volunteers gathered around a campfire. Someone from the Hollyhock kitchen brought down some of the chocolatiest hot chocolate ever. There was also vegetarian and meat hot dogs.