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The Northland Regional Council – which organised the clean-up from an approximately 40-metre stretch of coast near McLeod Bay’s Stuart Rd wharf – is less-than-impressed with those responsible.

Ricky Eyre, an Environmental Monitoring Officer (Coastal) with the Regional Council, says the dumping is unusual both in scale and nature and there are a number of possibilities as to how the chicken and fish came to be dumped on Monday night.

Mr Eyre says officials believe the same culprit was responsible for dumping both the chicken and fish remains.

“It’s likely the chickens, which appear to be commercially processed, have been dumped by their purchaser after some sort of subsequent refrigeration problem.

As far as the fish are concerned, they seem to have been dumped after filleting and include a mixture of John Dory, kingfish and snapper.”

Mr Eyre says contractors had over several hours yesterday (subs: Weds 04 July) recovered 42 chicken carcasses and the remains of about 70 fish, which had now been properly disposed of in Whangarei.

However, it’s possible even more chicken and fish had been dumped.

“As it is, the volume of rotting dumped material already recovered in a relatively contained area of coast posed a risk to the environment and other users of the coastal resource and those responsible face prosecution if identified.”

Mr Eyre says the area involved is popular with members of the public and the dumped material had also posed a potential risk to holidaying schoolchildren.

He says rubbish like the chicken and fish can be properly disposed of at the Re:Sort resource recovery park in Kioreroa Road, Whangarei.