Green Island Main, Alfred Bight and Denn’s Gulch

Day 6 - Tuesday 6 March

The surfers woke up at 5am but the surf was not up. We converged at the first site, Alfred Bight. This area had a large amount of micro plastic in amongst the rotting stinking kelp, an unfortunate place to spend a few hours. Desolate, wild, rough and you can tell that by what was washed up here the gradient was a high energy wave site, a testament to the wild west coast. Today, it was calm compared to what it could be on a stormy day.

As we travelled to the next site, we slit into two groups. One went by boat and the other scoured the challenging rocky shoreline for marine debris. There was various scattered large plastics and small plastics across the shoreline, including a large tractor tyre. How did it get here, we wondered? There was a substantial amount of glass. We speculated – does life affect organic life? Does it break down to sand? How long does this take?

The next site, Denn’s Gulch, was more rocky and there was plastic up further in the bush area. In exploring this site, we encountered dangerous plants and insects (nettles, jack jumpers and wasps). When there was nothing left to gather, including energy, ginger beers were drunk (shout out to our sponsor Gillespies!) and everyone boated back to count well over 17,000 pieces whilst others took the opportunity to catch the surf.

Blog by Team Wilson Voyager