Team Clean on the telly!

Hello there legends

Just in case you missed us, Team Clean got a great story up on 7 News Tasmania on Monday night. Check it out!

Team Clean on page three!

We've had a great run of media in the past 24 hours, and we'll be posting up links throughout today for you to peruse.

Here’s our legendary Captain Cleanup, Matty Dell, on page three of the newspaper today! 

You can check it out online right here - https://www.examiner.com.au/…/more-than-66000-pieces-of-r…/… ✨

Homeward Bound- Day 8

The team awoke early in the sanctuary of Schooner Cove to light winds and overcast sky's as we prepared for the steam from Port Davey to Recherche Bay. The steam takes over ten hours past some of the most beautiful and untouched wilderness on the planet, no people, no roads, no houses, and no lights, lets hope as a community we have the foresight to keep it that way for generations to come.

The Rumours led the charge making it to Recherche Bay by mid afternoon, the Velocity arrived around an hour later, while the Celtic Rose was last to arrive at around 6pm. After an afternoon and early evening of watersports and the recording of audio interviews the boats rafted up for one last get together before we returned to our home ports. A great dinner of Mel's special curry with some fresh tuna and roast vegetable was washed down with some of our sponsors finest.

Bramble Cove, apparently a day off… not ~ expedition day 7

A sleep in at least was something we indulged in. The Port Davey greys had well and truly set in creating an indeterminent sense of time and mood. We filled our bellies with saltana bran and milk before setting in to our individual chill time. As the neglected clock ticked away, the time soon came that the count of debris from the day before was upon us. The 3 crews got to it; washing the deck of the Celtic Rose, weighing down the tarp, and gathering the bulk bags from our 14km expedition of Stephens and Noyheener. The crew then split in to two, one on the Celtic Rose working through the larger items, and the other on Rumours tackling the dreaded micros and small rope.

Despite the drizzle and shades of grey, the spirits were at a surprisable high as this task has previously been under lights and on empty bellies.

After an hour or two of numbers and categories being all that could be heard, we came to our total. Stephens hit 6833, while Noyheener reached 9474, totalling 16,307 items for yesterday!

Although our day off had started as one would wish, it now seemed as though we were back in the swing of things. With this, delegation station was pumped up and called a clean up in Bramble Cove. The crew rallied up preparing for yet another wet landing, combined with the Davey rain. Plenty of rope dread locks, one coiled with small worms, their soft bodies braided into the decomposing rope in a strangely compelling aesthetic combination, that on closer inspection reveals the shocking legacy of toxicity as this is another moment where plastic enters the food chain.

The length of the Cove was short, which thankfully made the abundance of material present manageable, albeit simultaneously overwhelming. In a short dense period of time we gathered a total of 6531 items.

Blog by Cam.

Stephen’s & Noyheneer beaches ~ expedition day 6

Night rains had washed the skies for clear expansive views to the Rugby Range, as the good ship Rumours motored teams round to Stephen’s. We filled our eyeballs with more treasures, drinking in views of devastingly wild beauty. We donned wet-weather gear for a challenging landing, daunted by our predecessors tales of rough weather and legendary rubbish hauling, on these 2 long beaches.

After yesterday’s sand-blasting, on-beach conditions we were primed to hunt for rubbish. Heads went down, finding rusty balls and small plastics on wind sculpted pedestals. Stephen’s Bay soon revealed her more ancient charms, stunning living places displaying the bounty available here. It’s impossible for a photo to capture the sense of deep time these ancient living sites whisper of.

We discuss an artwork, contrasting the muted tones of these majestic beach living places with the jangly-loud colours of the shocking modern midden of plastic we’re now building on the boat deck. A modern midden of marine refuse, sent adrift across the ocean, by just a few consumptive generations.

Meanwhile, among the debris, other locals still prevail: devil prints snag across the sand, dragging something back for the kids in the foredunes…

It was a nice change to walk through the back dunes to our second beach, where prints of a young wombat waddling the sands, inspired Steve to dive under bushes to avoid soaking his holed foot in the marsh, emerging triumphant to tackle one half of the second beach solo.

The rain pops the nurdles up, but buries other small plastics in sand, making a challenging mix of micros and large awkward items. Beach access made safe loading a particular challenge to our awesome dinghy maestro’s and skippers. Wetsuits were donned to extract a heavy steel ball, half a shipwreck, and the large items walkers had gathered into the 2 campgrounds.

Collab blog by Mel and assorted other crew

Revenge of the nurdles ~ expedition day 5

Created in factories far far away and transported en masse upon the high seas the nurdles began their relentless quest for world domination...

Arrriving separately, each nurdle took its own private adventure through the high seas to be washed up upon the sheltered shores of Mulcahy Bay.

Together they gathered in a loose multicolour assemblage.... waiting... and waiting for the time when they would be melted and poured into moulds to become an item of greater importance... maybe a drink bottle, maybe a rope, maybe something heaps better than all of those things....

As the days passed, no melting or moulding occurred, the nurdles became restless, and began self-organising their ranks on the beach transforming into a toxic army of unseen scale and ferocity ready to unleash their fury upon humanity...

That was until... Team Clean arrived in force with finger pickers poised to rid the Mulcahy of the evil nurdle scourge. A hard-fought battle ensued with drizzly conditions obscuring much of the smaller plastics, yet the eager nurdles were stopped in their tracks and quickly sealed into ziplock bags.

A modest 5,295 items was plucked from the beach of which nurdles comprised 283 tiny evil particles.

*Nurdles are pelletised plastic (around 5mm in diameter and 3-4mm thick) that are processed by industrial machines to produce everyday plastic items. They come in every colour of the rainbow and through scientific compositional analysis can be traced back to their factory of origin.

Mass exfoliation event ~ expedition day 4

Nye Bay, also known as the Giblin, provided the day's rubbish hauling location - a windswept arc of sand towered over by large camel hump shaped dunes and the Giblin River winding its way back through the rolling quartzite hillocks of the Southwest.

Crew disembarked on the northern side of the beach in batches, among masses of tiny abalone shells and warreners collected in the tide lines on the shore.

A magnificent sunny day with light breeze soon turned into a mass exfoliation event of epic proportions as the wind sandblasted legs and styled new hairdos.

The wind blew hard from the north as crew moved south, which made the plastic pickings even harder as crew pushed on, lured to the end of the beach in the vain hope that a fresh Gillespie’s ginger beer would be delivered… shock horror - it was not forthcoming! Reward came as the beachcombing team turned around to walk the length of the beach empty-handed but with the rare chance to admire the fruits of their labour in full - seeing a beautiful place bereft of plastic pollution.

A rowdy and enthusiastic count played out on the deck of the Celtic Rose with Harry providing tips on new efficiencies in counting techniques, while Oscar hit the highest single count number so far: a whopping 2750 of a total of 7013 handpicked plastic pieces. The final count came in at 11,119 pieces of rubbish, not a bad effort for a days work in what has to be one of the worlds truly sensational places.

Micro plastic vortexes and the odd surfing seal ~ expedition day 3

Today has been massive! We woke up in Port Davey, in the beautiful calm waters of Bramble Cove, to the most dreamy sunrise above the mountains. After a very brisk little dive off the back of the Velocity, we followed a big old sea eagle and steamed on north.

The cleanup crew are a pretty hardy mob, but each expedition, the words Green Island Main strike fear into our hearts. You can actually hear the Darth Vader soundtrack floating across the water. Every year, we take a very deep breath, pick up our rubbish bags, and get ready for the most intensely polluted (and stinky – due to a whole lot of rotting kelp) beach of the cleanup.

Today was no exception, even though the beach appeared a little bit cleaner than previous years. It was absolutely trashed, with vortexes of micro plastic and rope and bottles everywhere you looked. Team Clean were absolutely up to the job though, cleaning up a massive 18,535 pieces of dirty rubbish from this wild World Heritage beach.

We had a little break, between hours of extreme beach cleaning and hours of extreme trash counting on a very rolly boat. A few crew got a cheeky little surf in, accompanied by a very happy seal. Hazza the legend stylemaster scored wave of the day – you could probably hear the hoots from Hobart.

We’ve anchored just off Nye Beach, and after a very large count on the deck that finished up well after 10pm, we’re about to settle in to our bunks for a rolly old night.

Photos by Ula Majewski

Spain Bay for starters ~ expedition days 1 + 2

Boats loaded, engines on, crew pumped, the Team Clean departed knowing that the journey around the South West was going to be bumpy as an understatement!! Three vessels of seven crew each, the boats punched into 4 metre waves making for a long night before we finally dropped anchor in Spain Bay around 3am. That’s when the skippers could finally relax & most of us could actually sleep rather than groan in our bunks.

Greeted by the local sea eagle pair checking out the new arrivals, the cleaning of Spain Bay beach began in earnest. Spain Bay is traditionally the first beach cleaned. For our return cleaners it was a welcome homecoming and for the new crew members an easy induction to the process of identifying macro and micro rubbish. There’s no doubt for those of Team Clean that have returned for many years to this place that the level of macro sized rubbish has decreased.

In part from Team Clean’s efforts and positive changes in how we all dispose of rubbish, but the levels of micro plastic continue to demonstrate how far we have to go. Your support of Team Clean and all our efforts to change the disposal of single use & other plastic- rubbishes is a community challenge we are all a part of. Today, we picked up 8,964 pieces of rubbish! Now, a bit of a rest overnight …. and off to the next beach in the morning.

Blog by Stevo. Photos by Ula.

Departure Day

We woke to sunny calm morning in the shelter of the bay at Southport and spent the morning unloading all of the crayfishing gear off the Velocity. We filled up all 10 dingy fuel cans, loaded the ginger beer and provisions and prepared the boats for departure.  Also along side the wharf was the Rumors with Adam and his crew who had loaded up their supplies the previous evening, they departed at 3 pm. Darren Clark on the Celtic Rose is due to depart at 4pm.

The team of 21 includes artists, activists, builders, commercial fishermen, architects and scientists.

With a three metre Southwest swell and 20 knots of wind from the southwest, we are hoping to make it around Whale Head and make our way at least to New Harbour. The forecast looks great for early next week and hopefully we can make it onto some the big exposed beaches north of Port Davey where the plastic has not been cleaned for two years.

Thanks again to all our sponsors and supporters, this mission would not happen without you.

More Provisions

The morning was spent visiting long term sponsors at the West Hobart Hill Street store to collect enough supplies to keep the crew of 21 well fed for the 2020 cleanup. The supplies were packed in reusable collapsible plastic crates in three piles, one for each of the boats.

Next stop was a visit the another of our long term sponsors at the Wursthaus Kitchen in Salmanca where Peter and Simon supply all our meat supplies. Chef Simon Webster pictured below has been on a few of the Cleanup Missions and knows how to knock up some sumptuous treats to keep us going after a long day on the beach.

The rest of the day was spent organising the team, talking with the media, sorting out the satellite communications and preparing for the departure around midday from Dover and Southport on Saturday. 

Essential Supplies

We are in full swing preparations now. I spent the morning picking up the sea sickness pills from my good friends Sam and Seymour at Gillespies Ginger Beer. Sam has been generously supporting the cleanup for around 10 years and has joined us on the mission in 2011. He has also donated some Gillespies shirts and beanies for the crew on the upcoming trip. Sam is currently exhibiting his Marine Debris Art skills down at the Copping Hall.

4 Days until departure

Team clean are gearing up for our next adventure around the coast and the weather looks interesting.
We started the week looking at 35 knot Southerly winds and 4.5 metres of swell for our Saturday departure, its now looking much more friendly at 15-20 knots southwesterly winds on a 2.5 to 3.5 metre swell.

We have ordered our fresh supplies from the good folks at Hill Street, The Wursthaus Kitchen and Gillespies Ginger Beer. The next few days will be spent in preparation for the big adventure.

A very big thanks to all of our friends, sponsors and supporters during the Pozible Crowdfunder Campaign, it was wonderful to see so many familiar names on the supporters lists.
Heres hoping for another fruitful trip to the wilds of Tasmania.

YEOWWWW! Our crowdfunder just hit $6500 💛

Thank you, a thousand million times, you wonderful big-hearted legends!

Thanks to you, we've just reached our fundraising stretch target of $6500 with seven days to go. Boomer!

We're kinda speechless (this is a highly unusual event) and feeling completely overwhelmed with the love and generosity that you, our beautiful salty family, have shown us over the past two weeks.

Thank you! You legends are our heroes.

Sending the biggest hugs in the world, from your biggest ever fans,
Team Clean x