WRITTEN BY KATIE
ON THE SOUTH PACIFIC EXPEDITION FROM AUCKLAND TO BAY OF ISLANDS
After setting off from Auckland, we sailed across the Hauraki Gulf and it wasn’t long before the beautiful Great Barrier Island loomed ahead of us. Sparsely populated with around 1200 residence, the island appeared as an untouched paradise. We headed into Port Fitzroy to anchor and rest our weary sailing bones.
In the morning we disembarked at Katherine Bay to complete a beach plastics survey. For this we inspected the bay for any plastic using evenly spread transects. After logging our data using the Marine Debris Tracker app, we met up with our local partners at Sustainable Coastlines to begin a beach cleanup of the bay.
Photo credit: Maya Baneva Petkova
Situated in the North West of Great Barrier Island, Katherine Bay is quite sheltered from New Zealand’s largest city, however the cleanup revealed a considerable amount of litter from the mainland. Plastic bottles, flip flops, lighters and bottle caps (oh so many bottle caps!) showed up in astonishing numbers. We also gathered a vast collection of synthetic ropes and fishing materials from the commercial and recreational fishers in the Hauraki Gulf, as well as a large amount of construction materials.
Photo credit: Katie Giles
It’s disturbing to see how much plastic waste is washing up on this remote, sparsely populated bay. It’s clear that us humans are impacting parts of the world we have barely stepped foot on, and all of the ocean in between.
As heartbreaking as the results of the clean up were, the feeling of accomplishment our team had after finishing was enormous. I cannot recommend enough for you to find a local clean up group in your community, and share in this feeling of achievement. And if I never see another bottle cap on a beach again, it’ll be too soon.
Photo credit: Zheng “Jinger” Zeng
