Co-founder of Tangaroa Blue and local environmentalist, Heidi Taylor, received a welcome phone call last week when she was advised that a change in circumstances meant her organisation could implement a project worth almost $400,000.

The project focuses on marine debris clean-ups and data gathering in an attempt to reduce the vast amount of rubbish, particularly plastic, which end up in our oceans.

"It basically looks at the marine debris initiative on a national level," Ms Taylor said.

"It does focus heavily on northern Australia. We have started to do some work in Cape York last year and this will enable us to continue that as well as stretching into the Torres Strait and the Northern Territory and the northern part of Western Australia.

"It also gives us some capacity to start working in areas which they consider remote and that includes an area down in South Australia and western Victoria."

An extension of 'Caring for Country' federal government grants program meant an original decision to overlook Tangaroa Blue for funding was overturned.

"(After the decision) We were disappointed but we put that aside and were looking for other ways we could continue throughout the year," Ms Taylor said.

"I received a phone call saying that there had been a new amount of money release through the grant process and we were now able to be funded for that project.

"I practically fell on the floor. It was totally out of the blue."

Ms Taylor said the $386,000 grant, which will fund the project for the remainder of this year and 2013, will enable communities to become more involved in marine conservation efforts.

"We were having a huge response from communities, government agencies, schools, and individuals who wanted to get involved in the project and we just didn't have any funding to allow that to happen.

"We're able now to run more clean-up events and do it in a lot more areas than just the ones we've been doing.

"It also enables us to do targeted clean-ups. When we know we've got a marine debris hot spot, we now have funding to take barges up and get rid of it."

Money will also be spent on clean-ip materials, educational materials, and a new technology to assist in data collection.

Data collected is used to identify debris items that come from a local source, who can then be approached by Tangaroa Blue to discuss ways to improve their practices.

Talks are currently being held with the Bureau of Meteorology whose weather balloons contain polystyrene and litter the oceans every day.

Ms Taylor said that people don't need to attend a beach clean-up to have a positive impact. Choosing products with less plastic packaging when doing the weekly shopping will help reduce the damage to the marine environment.

"More than 80 per cent of debris on most beaches is made of plastic which never biodegrades.

"We can force manufacturers to look at what they supplying through our buying power. We just don't buy those products any more. That's going to make a huge difference to the amount of debris, particularly plastics, that ends up in the ocean."

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