Fishnets and chill

DAY 1 

Southport to The Shank

 

Southport Wharf was a hive of activity in the early morning light. The crew who’d arrived early the night before with supplies, were up and ready to meet those coming south.  After more than a few minutes waiting at the newly installed Southport traffic lights, and a heavy tanker blocking the wharf entrance, we finally loaded the last of the supplies and stragglers and were ready for departure.

 

Nena, Velocity, Rumours and The Celtic Rose each steamed out from the wharf to start the 12-hour trip around the South-West Cape and beyond….

 

With a week of hard work and heavy lifting ahead of us, it didn’t stop us from feeling blessed and excited. To witness the wild south-west coast from this vantage point is a true wonder.  We were joined by a pod of bottle nose dolphins, who rode the waves on the bow for a good half hour.  The shy albatross, glided over the waves and the crew lost count of the other native birds as stormy petrels, common diving petrels, crested turns and sooty shearwaters gave us much to watch and admire.

 

The original plan was to hit Hibbs Pyramid but after a long day at the helm, with a few of us battling the green swell building inside, we found a sheltered anchorage through the maze of rocks that make up The Shank.  

 

The crew of Rumours lay warm and happy in the dining room, enjoying its first family dinner for the trip as the Nena dropped its anchor to give poor old Harry and Uls a good night’s rest after a rough day.

 

We spent the night rocking gently at anchorage, getting well rested ahead of tomorrow’s big day…

 

DAY 2

 

After Velocity and Celtic Rose steamed on to anchor at Hibbs Pyramid late last night, it was Rumours and Nena who arrived to find the rest of the team ashore and busy filling bags of this week’s bounty.

 

With sunshine and squalls lashing the coast, the team busied themselves pulling piles of trash and rope from the beach and rock faces.  It’s amazing how absorbed one can get when plucking micro-plastics from crevices.  With many old hands and a few new ones, everyone was occupied fillings bags and meeting new friends.

 

It was a mixture of sadness and pleasure, as we hauled trash from one end of the beach to the other.  The sadness coming from the sheer volume of trash that appeared in front of us. But one-by-one, the pieces went from beach-to-bag and our spirits rose.

 

A few of us set about the heavy lifting of several large lengths of poly pipe, adrift from one of the so-called sustainable fish-farms.  That combined with the mass of fish-net pieces and rope, had some of us wondering about the unseen affect these industries have on our vulnerable coastlines.

 

By 3pm we’d filled 25 bulka-bags and had to tackle the waves and winds to get the trash aboard the boats and ready for sorting and counting.  It was a monumental amount of plastics and waste that lay on the deck of Rumours, as us newbies were given the low-down on counting and classification of the trash.

 

It was a good 3-4 hours of busy sorting and sifting through tangles of rope for some, while others were zoned-in counting their share of bottles, fish-nets, stimi’s, tubs, floats and a seemingly endless variety of litter.  In total we picked up 7,502 individual pieces of trash before it was broken down, ending up in the oceans and food we eat.

 

The day was celebrated with a team dinner aboard Rumours, with a bounty of fresh fish and crays brought aboard by the crew.  As the sun set and a cold beer was cracked, a few over-enthusiastic scallywags scaled Hibbs Pyramid to enjoy the vista back over the coast to Frenchman’s and beyond.

 

Tomorrow will bring another big day of waste collection and with it, no doubt, many more laughs.

Words by Jimmy. Photos by Ula and Dan.