The heavy rain has stopped, and more and more people are slowly getting on board Uto Ni Yalo - a 72-foot double masted traditional Polynesian sailing canoe – most often called Mama Uto. The crew is already there, preparing lunch and making Mama Uto ready for today’s island clean-up. Half an hour ago it was still dark, and the air was filled with heavy raindrops and moisture, but even though the sun is still hidden behind clouds in different grey nuances, more and more activity on and around Mama Uto starts to happen. In the horizon we can see cracks in the clouds and glimpse of blue sky giving us hope for a dry day in Laucala Bay of the coast of Suva, Fiji’s capital where I do fieldwork.

Joining the cleanup at Makuluva Island today are mainly young Fijians representing smaller and bigger youth organizations as well as other stakeholders, all with a passion for the ocean.
People and equipment are being sailed from shore to Mama Uto in an outrigger canoe and an aluminum dingy, and the sound of the heavy raindrops are being replaced by greetings and small talk. Youth from World Wildlife Foundation, marine science students, a representant from Ministry of Waterways and Environment as well as volunteers from Pacific Ocean Litter Youth Project (POLYP) and others are all starting to arrive. T-shirts made for today’s event are being handed out and the deck is soon filled with people in identical blue t-shirts and life jackets. After a while Su, one of the initiators of POLYP and co-organizer of today’s event gather us in a circle on the deck. We are sailing to Makuluva Island were Suva SUP’ers, Fiji Surf association, USP Islanders Outrigger canoe paddlers and a few families will join us, she tells us. When we get there the main group will do a clean-up, walking around the island and a smaller group will do a Litter Intelligence survey on a 100m stretch of beach. After her briefing we get closer together, bow our heads and prepare for prayer. Su thanks everyone for coming today and for Uto Ni Yalo and the crew for sailing us to Makuluva Island. We hope that the wind and weather will be with us. We hope for a blessed day while we give back to our Waitui – the king of water. “Vinaka” we all greet as Su ends the prayer, then spreading out on the boat getting ready to sail.

The waters that surround Suva peninsula are known as Suva Lagoon with Suva Harbour to the west and Laucala bay to the east. Makuluva and Nukulau Island are two small islands approximately 8 km east of Suva peninsula at the edge of Laucala Bay. Makuluva is about 500 meter long and 150 meter wide, lying at the eastern edge of the reef system that surround Suva peninsula. Major changes to the shape of the island were a result of the 1953 earthquake and tsunami, which made it less triangular and more oval. Due to its location south of Rewa Delta, the largest delta in the Pacific Islands (240 km2) and approximately 5 km south of the Rewa River mouth, the longest and widest river in Fiji, Makuluva and Nukulau Islands are the last places southeast of Fijis main island Viti Levu where ocean and land meet before it is just ocean. With an approximate population of 250.000 in Greater Suva Urban area as well as 70.000 in the Rewa Delta, this part of Fiji is home to 1/3 of Fiji’s total population. Unmanaged waste, much of it plastic waste from the urban population in the city as well as traditional communities living along the river, coast and delta ends up at sea, being moved around by local winds and currents. Some of it might float around in the water collum, settle on the seafloor, float onto the open ocean or be pushed ashore at Makuluva Island, where we eventually will disembark Mama Uto.  

As we reach the passage between Nukulau and Makuluva island an anker is being dropped and two small boats sail back and forth between Mama Uto and Makuluva, bringing people and equipment onto the island. As the outrigger canoe paddlers and stand-up paddlers arrive, we gather for a briefing. Su and three others will be doing a Litter Intelligence Survey, while the rest of the group will walk around the Island. The walk takes roughly 15 minutes in a normal pace, but collecting waste it will take longer. People are divided into groups of two and each group get a large plastic bag and a category of waste that they are mainly responsible for collecting. Some are collecting PET bottles, some soft plastics, some hard plastic and plastic containers, and some metal, glass, textile and rubber. “Stick to the beach and do not walk to far into the shrubbery” one of the volunteer’s highlights. “We will never get everything and there is more than we can bring with us at the beach”.

I join the Litter Intelligence survey team. Litter Intelligence is an open access litter database which POLYP has started to use. It is run by the New Zealand charity Sustainable Coastlines. We measure and mark the survey area with sticks: 100 meter long and 20 meters wide. It is easier to sort and categorize later if we divide the types of waste between us while collecting, and I get to be in charge of PET bottles and plastic containers. We start collecting walking up and down the beach in a slow pace, slowly covering the 100-meter stretch while our bags are filling up. As we reach the end, we turn around and walk back for the second search. When we find a piece that does not belong in our bag, we call on each other. “Hard plastics for you” Su calls, dumping a piece of hard plastics into my bag. After the collection the work of sorting, counting and weighing begins, using standard tables from the Litter Intelligence survey. We weigh food containers, cosmetics and medical packaging, bottle caps and lids, unidentifiable hard plastic fragments, food wrappers, fabrics, foamed plastics, plastic utensils, toys, polystyrene food packs, metal, aluminum cans, glass bottles etc. the majority of it being plastics of some sort. In total we collect 4,59 kg of waste.

As the clean-up on the island come to an end the rest of the waste are also weighed. Three big 1-ton bulk bags have been filled with PET bottles and in total 162,9 kg of waste has been collected by the 30-40 volunteers. Equipment, people and now also waste are being sailed back to Mama Uto, and the day ends for most of the group with lunch onboard Mama Uto, small talk and a sail back to Suva and the dark clouds and heavy rain that are hanging over the city. 

Today's cleanup will only be visible for a short time, as both the global and Fijian consumption of plastics is accelerating. In Fiji the possibilities for proper waste management are still limited, and even though most of Greater Suva Urban area have waste collection a lot of waste, most of it being plastic, will continue to find its way to Makuluva Island.