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Captain Cook Cruises Fiji | Blog
Everyone that joins us for a cruise around Fiji’s beautiful islands would certainly agree that our islands and the seas we sail through are worth looking after. We’re pretty proud of our efforts to operate sustainably and to look after the beautiful Fiji environment we cruise through. Recently we’ve stepped things up a bit with the appointment of a Captain Cook Cruises Fiji Ocean Ambassador.
Plastic pollution is a real threat to our oceans and Captain Cook Cruises Fiji has decided to take action, to help clean up plastic waste on the remote islands we visit. It’s hard for some of the more remote villages to deal with plastic waste, so we’ve put our hands up to provide this service, and at the same time educating villagers and collecting valuable data about the types of waste found in the Fiji Islands.
The rubbish picked up at each beach clean-up is sorted and counted, and the data is then uploaded to a central database managed by Tangaroa Blue.
Tangaroa Blue runs the Australian Marine Debris Initiative: a network of volunteers, communities and organisations that contribute data about rubbish collected during clean-ups, then work on solutions to stop the flow of litter at the source, providing – for government bodies and manufacturers – data that shows them where specific types of plastic waste have been found, so they can locate the source and find solutions.
Our first Ocean Ambassador, third deck cadet Samisoni, collected 75kg of rubbish on his first cruise, and has so far led beach clean-ups on Brothers Beach, Blue Lagoon, Yaeta, Monu, Monuriki and Sacred Islands on three Yasawas cruises in the past month.
After each clean-up, Samisoni records his findings and sends them to us in head office, where the data is uploaded to the Tangaroa Blue database.
This is the first initiative of its kind in Fiji and will start to build invaluable data on marine litter issues the islands, especially so because Captain Cook visits so many different (and often remote) regions in Fiji.
Samisoni’s findings will also be reported here on the website, and we’ll post photos regularly to our Facebook page.
If you’re interested in helping Sami on a beach clean-up, we’d love you to volunteer, and we’d be happy to reward you afterwards with a nice cold Fiji Bitter for your efforts!
