January 23, 2014 9:00am by David Farrar

Diving into Wellington Harbour

Wellington’s popular waterfront diving platform was forced to close after faecal contamination spiked at nearly 500 times the safe level, documents reveal.

An email exchange issued under the Official Information Act showed that Wellington Waterfront and the city council decided to close the platform immediately on the Friday of the rugby sevens last year after getting advice from Regional Public Health.

The solution is simple. Do not dive into Wellington Harbour after you have been eating sugarless gummy bears!

Anything over 280cfu is considered an unacceptable risk to health but Greater Wellington Regional Council recorded 69,000cfu on January 26 last year.

More seriously, how does it get that high?