Seaweek is celebrated around this time each year in New Zealand to highlight our relationship with the sea and all its inhabitants. This year’s theme was “Look Beneath the Surface” which seemed perfect for our divers. A wide range of events were held around the country.
In Wellington we run several clean up events throughout the year and for Seaweek a small group of divers headed out along Petone Wharf to see what the could see. We usually dive this site each September but didn’t last year due to poor weather conditions so were expecting the divers to find quite a bit.
The visibility under the wharf wasn’t great to start with and once they starting picking up rubbish and untangling fishing line it got worse. The divers collected ~20kgs of rubbish between them. Mostly fishing line and other fishing related items such as knives & berley cans. There were a few bottles, a dive mask, a pair of goggles and a plastic trolley collected along the way.
Most of the rubbish was pulled up onto the wharf where the rubbish was stripped of marine life with lots of mussels and cushion stars returned to the sea.
Unfortunately there was a lot more rubbish on land with lots of food wrappers & drink containers and over 500 cigarette butts collected. The most unusual item collected was a single false eyelash!
A BIG thanks to those that participated and while the lack of rubbish found is not as fun for the divers it was great to see a clean(er) environment.
Dive HQ Wellington