Bay View, Feb. 12. Even after a mini-thaw, this was a beach still held by winter's clutches.
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1:15PM, 33 degrees, ~1 1/2 hrs past low tide |
Surprisingly, this winter, for all its snowstorms, has brought little energy to the beach so far. We've had some extremely windy weather & even
thundersnow. But ever since the
Christmas storm, winds seem to have blown hard offshore as the tides approach. Waves have been low (the tide lines are several feet -- even yards -- below the level of last year's
spring tides), and very little is either being tossed in or scoured back out.
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December's flotsam: freed now, but undisturbed |
No fresh lines of kelp, no other heavy detritus. Just old, dried, withered remnants of December -- and before. So, in a time of low ocean energy, what would a trip to the beach bring? First,
Zone N:
64 finds:
- Building materials: 6 (4 chunks of asphalt, brick, part of asphalt roof shingle)
- Foam/Styrofoam: 0
- Fishing misc.: 36 (5 claw bands/scraps, 2 rope scraps, 29 trap coating scraps)
- Food-related plastics: 1 (gum)
- Food-related metal/glass: 0
- Non-food/unknown plastics: 16 (inc. tire-tread scrap, 2 bottle caps, umbrella base, caulk, hairband, tieback, 2 o-rings, bandaid)
- Cigarette filters/plastics: 3
- Paper/wood: 2 (wooden handle, fence slat)
- Misc./unique: 0
Pretty much the normal spread. Dominated as usual by fishing debris, mostly scraps of the vinyl coating of lobster traps, ripped apart as the metal underneath rusts. (See "
Ex Uno, Plures.") The piece of tread seemed odd. My hunch is that it's from an old waste tire used as a boat bumper, but that's just a guess.
Oh, and why list chewing gum as a food plastic? Because that's what chewing gum is. It's plastic:
polyvinyl acetate and/or polyethylene, to name just a couple potential ingredients. All part of our plastic world.
On to
Zone S:
47 finds:
- Building materials: 10 (asphalt chunks)
- Foam/Styrofoam: 0
- Fishing misc.: 22 (3 rope scraps, 2 claw bands, 17 trap coatings)
- Food-related plastics: 1 (fork tine)
- Food-related metal/glass: 0
- Non-food/unknown plastics: 13 (inc. bottle cap, duct tape, silly band, tiedown, o-ring)
- Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
- Paper/wood: 1 (fence slat)
- Misc./unique: 0
More of the usual. Except for a bunch of small asphalt chunks this time. Maybe freeze/thaw shattered one big one? Don't know. As with Zone N, nothing really worthy of a close-up.
So that's about it for this week. This report sheds little light by itself. But it builds on what's come before. And it's a reminder that even a sleeping shoreline is still invaded every week by things that don't belong.
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The ocean doesn't forget |
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