The Clyde Quay Marina in Wellington was dark and gloomy over the weekend, but underneath that surface, things are starting to look a little clearer.
That’s all thanks to divers helping reclaim the polluted seabed by removing trash, bit by bit.
Last week over 60 volunteers gathered for a full day's effort, led by Ghost Diving NZ founder Rob Wilson. Around six tonnes of trash was collected including 22 road cones, 4 E-scooters, 2 car batteries, 100 drink cans and even an aircraft tyre.
The biggest haul of the day was bottles. They broke their record of 1700 bottles by collecting well over 2,300 on Saturday.
Wilson and his team have been ghost diving and cleaning up Wellington’s waterfront for a couple of years now. The Covid-19 pandemic stalled their progress but they returned with a large group from all walks of life and of all ages, each assigned a role.
There were 15 divers, a couple of kayakers, and numerous helping hands on shore organising all the junk.
All the items were searched for sea life, sorted into categories, bagged and it’s set to be taken away by Wellington City Council.
But, some things didn’t get bagged. One of the more interesting finds of the day was a couple of live ammunition rounds.
“These are two 70 calibre rifle rounds, not sure exactly how they made it into Clyde Quay Marina,” Wilson says.
Some of the divers even found a 50 cent and 20 cent coin.
“We have seen a change there yesterday (Saturday) there was a stingray spotted in there which was nice, it’s good to see creatures are coming back into the marina now that we've removed so much stuff out of there," Wilson said.
He says year-on-year there’s less junk and he gives credit to the younger generation for being warier of where their trash ends up.
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