Day 2 started with a 0630 departure from Recherche Bay, for those of us who were awake, we were escorted out by a pod of dolphins riding the bow waves. By the time I rose from the depths of the rocking ship, I was treated to the incredible views of the south coast.
Precipitous Bluff was visible in all its beauty, a trip for another time. It was all smooth sailing, with the weather gods being on our side. The sun was shining, the swell rolling through and we were on the lookout for flocks of birds to give away the tuna's location.
As we cruised along in the sunshine, the fishing line was out the back of the boat hoping to catch our next feed. With great excitement, a fish was hooked, and with several stressful minutes of reeling, the >40 kg blue fin tuna was reeled in by our resident chef on board, Masaaki. It was an absolute beauty. Straight onto the ice she went and we will have the pleasure of eating her in a few days. After all the excitement of the fish catching, a nap was on the cards to prep ourselves for the first beach rubbish pick up. The views continued to impress as we headed around SW cape.
We anchored at Noyhener Beach ready to start collecting the rubbish. We headed to shore, got a quick briefing and started the search.
It was a beautiful beach, sensationally white sand, mountains as the back drop. From the boat, and even standing on the eastern end of the beach it was hard to believe there would be a lot of rubbish.
However as the eyes became accustomed, the colourful micro plastics shone their ugly head.
We wandered the beach for a couple of hours. Keeping our heads close to sand, in order to try not a miss a bit of rubbish. Discarded buoys, bait buckets, bait line, endless rope, bottles (so many plastic bottles) were all picked up and taken back to the boats for future counting. All the rubbish was tipped out, sorted into different categories and counted.
The overall number of rubbish collected was 4314. Not a large amount of rubbish compared to previous trips, however a good start.
Tomorrows promises to be another sensational day on the west coast. We plan to spend a few more hours on the beaches to see what we can collect.
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