Boaties fuming at TV's Celebrity Treasure Island trash

Celebrity Treasure Island was shot in the Mamanacu island group.

Wellington businessman Donald Stott was so incensed by the mess left after New Zealanders filmed Celebrity Treasure Island on an uninhabited Fijian island that he chartered a boat and crew to clean it up.

But when the clean-up party arrived off Navadra in the Mamanacu island group last Friday - armed with rubbish bags, rakes and rubber gloves - Eyeworks Touchdown producers and the island's owners stopped them going ashore.

Touchdown has an arrangement with the Fijian owners barring any other visitors while it is hiring the island for filming.

The Auckland-based production company recently started shooting another series of the survivor-type reality show Celebrity Treasure Island.

And while Mr Stott and other visiting boaties blame Touchdown for the rubbish left on Navadra, the company blames boaties and Fijian fishers.

Mr Stott said visiting boaties had cleaned up some of the rubbish left when previous filming stopped but the island was still in a terrible state when he visited last month.

"It's appalling to think how bad it must have once been," he said. "There were empty wine bottles, plastic bottles, broken glass and rubbish everywhere.

"Last month we anchored off to do some snorkelling. I went up the beach and saw the vandalism that had taken place in the form of rubbish strewn about the place.

"I couldn't believe someone could do that, particularly a bunch of New Zealanders who'd gone out there to film."

Mr Stott said he hoped Touchdown would "do the right thing" and leave the islands tidy after they've finished filming this time.

Dave Lyndon, the New Zealand skipper of the Pacific Gem, said he had seen the mess Navadra had been left in after filming in previous years and was "pretty disappointed".

"Beer bottles, wine bottles, disposable razors, you name it [were there]," he said. "It wasn't as though it was just a little bit left behind - then you'd think they just missed it. It was like somebody just got up and left."

Touchdown director Mike Molloy said that, before and after shooting, the company employed about 15 people from the village of Tavua, owners of the island, to clean up and construct temporary accommodation for cast and crews.

"Each time we hire the island we have to spend considerable resources on cleaning up, as the combination of the flotsam and jetsam floating around the Pacific and the minority of locals and visitors who do not look after the island mean there is considerable rubbish to remove and/or vandalism to repair," Mr Molloy said in a statement.

Before leaving the island, Touchdown signed off with the island's owners that it was in a clean state, Mr Molloy said.

- NZPA