In early January our dive club headed over to Matiu-Somes Island for our annual beach & underwater clean up.

This year we started with a beach clean up along the north eastern beaches. Most of the rubbish on Somes floats over from Wellington and it was pleasing to see not a lot of it this year. We collected several bottles, 3 different balls – including a football, a flare case, food wrappers and random pieces of plastic.

After the ferries left we headed out to dive around the wharves. Either jumping of the main wharf or walking down to the WWII wharf all the divers had fun and collected rubbish as they went. Again there didn’t appear to be a lot of recent rubbish – a few bottles and fishing line, a hammer and builder’s measure, a pot and tyres were amongst the haul.

There were also several large Wellington Nudibranchs & their eggs, terakihi, moki and spotties as well as two large stargazers seen during the dives.

Everyone had lots of fun, we stay on the island overnight, eat too much, chat about everything and explore the island. At night we get to see our endangered Giant Wetas and Tuatara along the tracks.