From Kianlaut at the eastern tip of Seram, we headed around the corner into the Banda Sea to get a shorter run across to Banda Neira. The passage from the Seram Sea to the Banda Sea was a short gap between islands, and the current ran against us here at a couple of knots.
On a calm sea, we picked our way in to a shallow anchorage close to the island, where we could see the anchor go down on to sand in about 8 meters depth. We were immediately invaded by a boat full of locals who had dressed up to visit the island from the day. They had made the trip across from a village on the mainland in their old longboat. Their old 40hp 2 stroke outboard spluttered and farted on the mixture of fuel that it sucked up from the open top container that the engineer sat between his legs, with the fuel line in his hand.
On the shore, we were soon joined by local fishermen, who came to the island to collect the plentiful hermit crabs for bait, which they shelled on the rocks before heading out to fish. Others were coming to collect baitfish with nets, before fishing all night.
The sandy spit of the island was almost entirely covered in plastic waste, and we came back again the next day and spent several hours collecting piles of this waste which we burned. It is impossible to get an accurate measure of the amount that we (4 adults) collected in this time, as some was in the form of large sheets while much of it was little items like bottle tops and toothbrushes. I’d estimate that we had each filled our 10 litre buckets at least 20 times, making a total of about 800 litres of plastic fragments removed from the marine environment and turned into toxic gas.
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