Plastics washing up on Oneroa Beach in June 2025

Microplastics galore!

Those of you watching the news and keeping an eye on the Waiheke beaches will know we have had millions of unwanted visitors gracing us with their presence on our Northern beaches over the last few weeks. While microplastic ‘nurdles’ are not a new visitor to our island, they arrived in droves last month thanks to the particular weather conditions and king tides. At this point, we can’t say with any certainty the source of these nurdles, but what we do know is that they are bad news for fish, seabirds and all other creatures that dwell in our oceans and coastlines (including us!) 

After a week of ad hoc community efforts to clean the microplastics from Oneroa Beach, the WMP kicked into gear with a snap-action community beach clean on Saturday 7th June. The last minute event saw our Pāoa rangatahi taking a lead in hosting some 40 keen locals, on their hands and knees with hand-held sieves, separating plastic from sand and leaves. This isn’t easy work, but many hands make light work! 

Our wonderful partners at Waiheke Resources Trust continue to work alongside us at the WMP to raise awareness about microplastic pollution on our beaches. Tamariki involved in the Marine Education Initiative are learning about microplastics in their current modules, and we will continue to host community beach cleans over the year. Please keep in the loop with these and come along when you can! 

A big thank you to the Waiheke Local Board for supporting the WMP to enable a community beach clean ‘tool library’ to be set up - anyone who is keen to get involved can borrow sieves, gloves, bags and other paraphernalia to do their bit! Everything is stored at Waiheke Resources Trust (1A Mako St) in a box outside the centre. In the background, we are also investigating the possibility of building a microplastics trommel to scale up the cleaning efforts. As always, our eyes are focused on grassroots action for the future.

If there is anyone out there wishing to contribute to this, please get in touch! It would be a great resource to have available for when (not if) these tiny unwanted guests grace us with their presence again.