Hi guys, Sarah here – this is an update of our trip to Wellington so far.
I spent most of yesterday talking to local businesses about our ‘shark art’ event, getting really positive responses from them. I also had time to meet some ‘Save our Maui and Hector Dolphins’ group who had a march earlier in the day.
In the evening I met up with the Greenpeace crew who drove down from Auckland although there was no time for chitter chatter as we had one hour to get ready for the Kids Can Santa race.
It was a bit of a bumpy start as Damien the finless shark had more buoyancy than expected. So after filling the tank a couple of times and some help from the nice guys at Fergs Kayaks we decided to drain the tank and sort that problem out later as there was a race to win!
But the problems with Damien weren’t over yet – we wheeled Damien over in his tank to a location we thought we would get maximum exposure, unfortunately this ‘ideal’ location happened to be in the middle of the racing track (oops!).
Anyway… We had two sharks enter the 2km race, they didn’t win it but they weren’t last either (although I have my suspicions they may have taken a shortcut!). Two sweaty sharks and 400 santas later we had completed our first mission of the week.
This morning we were up a little after 6am. The weather wasn’t nice but at least it wasn’t windy and we were all eager to get the shark fins in the water.
This time it wasn’t Damien that was getting in the way. The sharks being the social creatures that they are, the fins refused to stay away from each other and kept getting tangled up! A couple resuscitated fins later, lots of rope to untangle and a very wet crew, we finally had a lagoon that looked like it was infested with sharks. In fact a couple tourists momentarily thought they were real!
Before 9am we had Tim from the Dominion post coincidentally cycle by and had out story up on line within fifteen minutes- so it was a good but bumpy start!
Nathan Argent, our Greenpeace spokesperson got a few words in on camera between the blasting water fountain and the man water blasting the steps. By the time the cameramen had got their ultimate shots it was a bit after twelve but we were well underway to getting people to sign the submissions!
So far it has been lots of fun engaging with the public about this senseless practice that happens in New Zealand and its cool to see the public so supportive of this campaign to ban shark finning! There’s only 3 days to go to get your submission in on the future of shark finning in New Zealand.
Take the chance to do so here:
www.greenpeace.org.nz/sharks