Wellington wharf dive reveals an underwater tip

Footage shot by New Zealand Sea Adventures this week of the state of the sea floor off Wellington's Taranaki St Wharf. Video by Andrew Lett, www.scubadiving.co.nz.

Wellington's disgusting sea floor

CRAIG SIMCOX/ The Dominion Post

DIRTY JOB: Andrew Lett's underwater video survey of Taranaki St Wharf left him shocked and disgusted.

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The disgusting state of the sea floor around Wellington's Taranaki St Wharf has surprised a diver who has organised an underwater cleanup.

Preliminary surveys have found significant numbers of plastic bags, plastic bottles, signs, road cones, metal bars, condoms, tampons and even an old motorbike.

Andrew Lett, from New Zealand Sea Adventures in Porirua, will lead a team of volunteer divers today to clean up the area, but has found that his job is bigger than he imagined.

He took underwater video footage early this week and was left shaking his head in disbelief.

"I just couldn't believe it. There are hundreds of bottles and cans, and loads of glass. The harbour is supposed to be the jewel in Wellington's crown but it is actually quite disgusting in there.

"There were heaps of cigarette butts which the fish eat and we then eat the fish. Technically, we are eating our own pollution."

Two stormwater drains empty into the harbour beneath the wharf but drains feeding them are fitted with baffles that prevent cans and bottles from entering the stormwater system.

Wellington City Council's infrastructure planning manager Maria Archer said the effect of the underwater litter on water quality was difficult to measure.

"Slowly decaying metals, plastics, cigarette butts and other materials will contaminate the seabed but the decomposition will be so slow that it won't be detectable in our monitoring."

She called the state of the seabed "disgusting and depressing" and blamed it on people chucking rubbish directly off the wharf and from boats.

"Some of it might drift there from other parts of the harbour and other items, like empty cans, might be blown into the water."

From today the council's service centres will sell stretch-nets to cover green recycling bins used by thousands of residents each week. The nets will cost $12.

EnviroFlexiNet spokeswoman Amanda Hargraves said the nets would help to contain the items in recycling bins and prevent the wind from blowing them away. "Wellington will now have a real alternative to plastic bags in containing their recyclables."

The nets, invented by Wellingtonian Tai Haronga, are already used in Lower Hutt and Carterton.

The underwater rubbish collection starts at 10am from Taranaki St Wharf. Volunteer divers are welcome.

The Frank Kitts Lagoon is also being cleaned today by a group of divers organised by Splash Gordon.

Video by Andrew Lett, www.scubadiving.co.nz

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the City is Ours   #1   06:17 pm Sep 19 2009

Well done, the City is Ours was at the presentation of this concept and commend the council and the team leader of the environment port-folio for finaly adopting them.

This neat net to cover our green bins was priced at $ 7.00 per unit by the inventor during the presentation can we ask where the $ 5 goes and is there a special rate for low-and fixed income families who want to help the programme and stop using plastic bags to contain their recycling?

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