Council reluctant to help remove piles of grubby kelp on busy Auckland beach

Wednesday, 9 May 2018

Geoff Bonham believes as many as 1000 people use Takapuna beach at any one time on a busy weekend.

A Takapuna resident is describing a thick carpet of seaweed, mixed with rubbish, on his local beach as 'an absolute joke' and 'a disgrace' he wants Auckland Council to clean the mess up.

Geoff Bonham, who has been walking Takapuna Beach regularly for 12 years, believed the kelp that rolled in with the latest big storm had made the popular strolling spot un-walkable.

On May 6, he wrote to the two North Shore councillors asking them to invest in a beach-cleaning machine instead of SkyPath.

'I ask you Chris [Darby] & Richard [Hills] could you please send me a Cost-Benefit Ratio, on the SkyPath, to how many people will use it, & a Cost Benefit Ratio for a Beach Cleaner to the number of people who walk the beach,' Bonham wrote in an email.

**READ MORE:

Recent storms have led to a mass of seaweed on Takapuna Beach and renewed calls for the council to clear the mess away (May 6).

* Machine to clean Auckland's popular Takapuna beach could put it at risk: Councillor

* Seaweed v humans: the battle for the beach

Seaweed and rubbish are making it difficult to walk on Takapuna Beach after a recent storm and resident Geoff Bonham wants Auckland Council to invest some of its budget in a machine for cleaning the beach (May 6.)

* Human remains found on Takapuna Beach may have been in water for weeks**

It isn't the first time he'd requested the council to tackle the 'issue', nor is he the first person. Many residents would like Takapuna beach-cleaning to become a regular event.

Seaweed is particularly common at Takapuna beach after swells from the north-east.

But it looks like his request is heading for the same answer as previous appeals: 'No'.

Head of operational management and maintenance, Agnes McCormack, said the council's standard approach was to leave seaweed on the beach to either break down naturally or get taken away by the tide.

She said the council regularly monitored the volume of seaweed at Takapuna Beach but regular removal was not a viable option 'given that there are more than 600 beaches in the Auckland region and seaweed-removal work can cost in the vicinity of up to $50,000 per clean up'.

'It is not a prudent use of ratepayer money to remove it in autumn.'

Earlier this year, Auckland Councillor Chris Darby said elected officials had been advised against regular beach cleans because of the risk of erosion.

'It is that organic matter, combined with sand, which binds your beach berm together,' Darby said.

NIWA's Professor, Wendy Nelson, didn't wish to comment on erosion at Takapuna beach but said seaweed played an important role in the food web.

'There's whole communities of small organisms which live on and around that seaweed, helping to break it down,' Nelson said.

'The fragments of that seaweed are really important in the food chain for a whole lot of filter-feeding organisms.'

Those filter-feeding organisms, Nelson pointed out, are 'critically important' food for larger fish such as snapper. Because of this, Nelson felt it was problematic to isolate seaweed as a 'nuisance'.

But Bonham believed it was still worth pushing for the clean-up on an area he described as 'one of Takapuna's biggest assets'.

'It's such a magic beach to walk [but with] all that seaweed and grubbery over it … it's just ludicrous stuff,' Bonham said.

'Any other beach in the world that's as good as this one is clean.'