What a fantastic day! The weather finally cleared and despite being a week postponed the Makara Coastal Cleanup was a huge success. This was the final event in our Love Your Coast Wellington Education and Clean-up project. 50 dedicated volunteers of all ages met at our basecamp at Makara beach on Saturday morning. There were many familiar faces from previous years, but it was really good to see plenty of new faces too.

After a Health and Safety briefing from Programmes Manager Oliver Vetter, the capable Meridian staff led the convoy of eight 4WD vehicles over the hill to Opau Beach on the West Wind Meridian Wind Farm to show some love to an almost untouched bay.

Those with young kids, or those feeling more like a walk in the wind, grabbed their gloves and bags and headed out around the points of Makara Beach to see what treasure they could find.

After only a couple of hours everyone returned for a tasty BBQ with more than 3,000 litres of rubbish in their utes and trailers. They picked up hundreds of kilos of fishing gear, buoys, crates and line but also the old culprits; thousands of pieces of single-use plastic, straws, cigarette butts, water bottles and microplastics.

Huge thanks to Meridian Energy as well as our sponsors Phoenix Drinks for hydrating us with their amazing juices, Whittaker’s Chocolate for the energy boost and The Makara Cafe handing out coffees for the volunteers.

Special thanks to Carly Anderson of Meridian Energy for always bringing such amazing energy and supporting our work.

 

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Due to the nasty weather forecast for Saturday lunchtime we are postponing this event to SATURDAY 17 DECEMBER. Due to the nature of the 4WD tracks, we need to make sure that everyone gets in and out of the private beaches safely. Heavy rain and wind will not only make these tracks more difficult to navigate, but will make the day way less fun. Apologies for any inconvenience caused by the delay.

 

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Please join us from 9.30am to 3.00pm on Saturday 17 December 2016 for a fantastic day of adventure and exploration, all the while cleaning up the beautiful Makara Beach and the coastline surrounding Meridian Energy’s West Wind farm. This wild piece of spectacular coastline, although well looked after by the locals, is affected by a regular flow of waste, so we are going to give it a good pre-summer clean-up. Meridian has been working with Sustainable Coastlines to raise awareness and support coastal clean-ups around Wellington since 2012.

Meet at the Sustainable Coastlines ‘Education Station’ container on Makara Beach at 9.30am, Saturday 17 December to sign-in and collect equipment, for a 10.00am start. From there we will split into teams and head out along the coastline on foot and by 4WD vehicle to clean-up the area from Makara Beach around to Ohau and Opau Bays.

Bring your own 4WD or jump in one that is provided to join the convoy. This will be a unique opportunity to explore the incredibly beautiful bays that are usually closed to the public where unfortunately, tonnes of plastic rubbish washes up.

Bring your own lunch or join us for a free sausage sizzle from 12.30pm at Makara Beach.

Participants need to bring:

• Sturdy shoes – this area has some challenging coastal terrain with rocks that can be sharp, loose and slippery. You’ll need closed-toe, sturdy shoes (such as sneakers, sports shoes or tramping boots).
• Warm and waterproof clothes – New Zealand weather is unpredictable, especially out here. Bring at least one warm top (ideally woollen) and a rain jacket.
• Sun hat and sun cream.
• Reusable water bottle (filled-up and ready to go).
• Camera (optional) – this is a unique and beautiful location and we would love to see your photos after the event.
• Your own 4WD (optional) – this is a rare opportunity to explore an amazing area that is usually closed to public access.

Any questions, please contact Project Manager Oliver Vetter at [email protected]

On the back of our highly successful planting day in collaboration with the Te Atatu Marae Coalition, Auckland Council and others, we’d love to get your help to finish off this kaupapa. While the day was a huge success, we still have a big pile of mulch that needs to be spread along one-third of the planting area. We got a lot done on the day, but we have some more mahi yet to finish this off.

If you have a volunteer day you need to use, or just some free time to help out in the local community, please do come and join us for a day or two of mulching. Mulching is really important to help suppress weeds and keep the ground nice from drying out over summer, which gives the 2,400 natives we planted the best chance of survival to next winter.

Many hands make light work so please join us from 9:30am on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 October at Harbourview-Orangihina Park, Te Atatu Peninsula (entrance off the roundabout opposite Gloria Ave).

Please register your attendance on the form below to help us plan. 

For our Love your Coast 2015 finale, come and join us on Sunday 13 December from 7.00pm at the Lighthouse Cinema, Cuba for an exclusive screening of ‘In the Heart of the Sea’.

We invite you, your family and friends to come and celebrate the end of the Love Your Coast Wellington for 2015. The efforts of Wellingtonians during the last few months have been epic, with thousands of school children, teachers, divers, kayakers, four-wheel drivers, and you — the public — involved.

We will be screening the recently released film ‘In the Heart of the Sea’. “In 1820, crewmen aboard the New England vessel Essex face a harrowing battle for survival when a whale of mammoth size and strength attacks with force, crippling their ship and leaving them adrift in the ocean. Pushed to their limits and facing storms, starvation, panic and despair, the survivors must resort to the unthinkable to stay alive. Their incredible tale ultimately inspires author Herman Melville to write ‘Moby-Dick.’”

GET YOUR TICKETS HERE

The movie is PG13 and tickets are $20, and include delicious drinks courtesy of Phoenix Organics. There will also be alcoholic beverages, as well as other food and soft drinks available for purchase at the cinema bar.

From 7.00pm we’ll have pictures taken from during the last term’s clean-up events on show, as well as the announcement of our ‘Weirdest Beach Treasure’ competition. Get your tickets through the link above or by clicking here.

Oh no! Sorry, but sporadic rain and wind have forced us to cancel this evening’s movie screening! The weather has been good to us for the past two months during our Love your Coast Wellington event series, allowing us to run 35 clean-ups involving 3,037 people. We also managed to deliver 63 presentations at 33 schools, to 5,273 attendees. Phew, thank you Wellington! More results and photos to come.

 

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Join us on Saturday 13 December from 8.30pm in downtown Wellington’s Waitangi Park for a free outdoor screening of the hilariously peculiar Wes Anderson classic, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. We invite you, your family and friends to come and celebrate the end of the Love your Coast Tour of Wellington for 2014. The efforts of Wellingtonians during the last few months have been epic, with thousands of school children, teachers, divers, kayakers, four wheel drivers, and you — the public — involved.

If you’ve not seen the film ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’, it’s a Wes Anderson masterpiece at it’s most quirky and stylistic, with Bill Murray playing…”the autocratic oceanographer and has-been star of his own self-produced marine documentaries. Zissou is a weird mixture of Jacques Cousteau, Captain Kirk and Captain Bligh, but mainly the French legend Cousteau, to whose calmly paced and lugubriously narrated television shows the movie is a lovingly detailed tribute.” The Guardian Review

The Saturday December 13th screening promises a treat for the whole family, and we’ll have pictures taken from during the last term’s cleanups with the schools on show, as well as the announcement of the writing and photo competition that we’re running with the students.

Join us at 9:30am on Saturday 29 November on the Wellington Waterfront for a day of SCUBA diving and kayak-based clean-up. The dive site will be on the wharf next to Frank Kitts Lagoon. Last year was a huge effort and this year we’re making a day for the whole family with Diving, Kayaking, Face Painting, Education and Music!!  Both DOC and the University biologists will be on site picking the marine life out of the debris and identifying the critters we find.

Anyone can help! We need volunteers for all the following activities:

Divers

Please bring everything you need to dive. Dive Master(s) to give dive safety briefing and supervise divers. Dives will be logged Divers – must be advanced divers with prior dive clean up experience. Please bring your own catch bags, but we will have some spare onion bags as back up.

Snorkelers

Snorkelers and free-divers are invited to join the clean-up and focus on Frank Kitts Lagoon.

Wharf cleaners

Anyone on foot can join too!  Our foot soldiers can clean up the litter from under the wharf – gardening gloves& sturdy shoes are essential. Last year some people suggested a head torch would help.  Also we need help under the wharf too – please bring gardening gloves and sturdy shoes are the order of the day and a head torch would help too.

Kayak Support

Kayakers are essential for diver support to help retrieve the rubbish as the divers pass up the bags.

Location

Frank Kitt’s Lagoon – Near the pedestrian bridge.

Questions?  Concerns?  Contact Meagan Miller at [email protected]