A volunteer student army was on mess duty around the Otago Harbour basin in Dunedin yesterday.
Scarfie Army project sponsor Terry Buckingham said 10 second-year students from the Otago Polytechnic institute of sport and adventure picked up rubbish for a few hours.
Each volunteer easily filled two hessian coffee-bean sacks with rubbish, which ranged from a baby's dummy to an engine gasket, Mr Buckingham said.
The perception of the harbour being clean and green was wrong, he said.
"It looks relatively clean, but when you get down there among the rocks, it's not."
The Portsmouth Dr stretch of the harbour had the highest density of unwanted debris, he said.
The coastal clean-up was the second part of a pilot project of the Scarfie Army, an Otago Polytechnic initiative with the University of Otago, he said.
The first part had 20 automotive engineering students service a fleet of community vehicles free earlier this month, Mr Buckingham said.
Now the pilot was complete, they would consider projects for next year, possibly more vehicle servicing and coastal clean-ups.
Polytechnic student Conor Whitehead said he would volunteer for another coastal clean-up.
"In a heartbeat."
