The team awoke at dawn and headed north out of Port Davey for the first day cleaning an open ocean beach. Escorted up the coast by albatross and shearwater, the crew were dropped in the sheltered coves at the northern end of Wreck Bay. What started as a gentle walk along the beach through the steep sharp rocks soon descended into a slow crawl on all fours picking up thousands of small plastic pieces. The density of the plastic meant it took the crew of 11 over 2 hours to move 100 metres along the face and base of large dune south of a tannin stained creek. The creek also yielded a number of large ropes and a large, very heavy plastic encased glass pressure buoy, rated to use at depths up to 6700 metres.
South of the beach past the remnants of the wreck of the Svenor, whose ribs were still visible along the tideline, the team found another small plastic hotspot. After 6 hours on the beach we dragged our haul back over the angrily sharp quartzite headlands and back to a sheltered beach for Dave to retrieve in the dingy.
The count took well over three hours with a record 898 nurdles amongst the 15,646 items counted. Over 12,000 of these items were plastic pieces, along with over 1000 pieces of rope, 484 bottle caps and 196 bait straps.
Masaaki's restaurant at the end of the world served up a late but sumptuous feast of fresh tuna temaki handrolls, BBQ crayfish, and a magnificent rich crayfish and vegetable miso to celebrate Albert's 26th birthday.
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