WRITTEN BY AMANDA AND NICOLA
ON THE SOUTH PACIFIC EXPEDITION FROM TONGATAPU TO VAVA’U
After a welcome coffee at the beautiful Waterside restaurant we made our way to the wharf to join SV WindShift. Luggage on board, unpacked, excited conversations and more welcome teas and coffees we had our first briefing. A delicious lunch of chickpea salad and watermelon. Wonderfully refreshing.
Photo credit: Pallavi Davé
The South Pacific III has the fascinating role of researching both plastics in the ocean and on land. Our research kicked off with a litter transact recording details of litter (all types) within a randomly selected sample. We had some fun going through some practical training to complement all the pre-voyage online training course.
Photo credit: Amanda Ayliffe
Armed with our debris tracker App, bright green gloves, a measuring rule and paper bags for collecting unidentifiable small fragments, we were now ready for action. The ten of us were also beginning to attract some attention!
We met a lovely nurse from New Zealand who has spent a week training local doctors and nurses, she had met one of our crew earlier and was thrilled to know we were part of her mission. She was very enthusiastic about our research work and excitedly described how we were becoming quite famous locally, even the taxi driver knew all about us. It was lovely to hear how she is following eXXpedition exploring how her son might do similar research work with his school back home in NZ.
Photo credit: Amanda Ayliffe
Whilst the amount of plastic packaging in the local convenience stores was shocking, we had encouraging moments too. This included a lovely warm welcome from a food vendor, they looked at us a little quizzically – especially at our bright green gloves again! However, a few smiles and chat about what we were doing, and why, was met with enthusiastic story telling from the store team. They explained how the local churches were running community clean up events every month in allocated areas. This had become quite competitive! We learnt that the collected plastic waste is then crushed and used as a filler material in road construction.
