Collection Report Feb 23, 2011

Greetings again from sunny Bay View, Saco, Maine, February 23, 2011:

11:00AM, 30 degrees, ~2 hrs past low tide

The word of this week was "dull."

Only tiny organic powder on the tide lines

This week saw a mid-winter warmup (and then cool-down), and a bunch of very blustery days with winds gusting over 30 MPH (see bottom of links here and here). Yet, again, that energy didn't bring much to the shore. Why? Check out these charts.

Wk of 2/13-2/19, from http://www.wunderground.com

Wk of 2/20-2/26, from http://www.wunderground.com

Westerly winds. From 2/13 (the time of my last report) to 2/23,* our winds very rarely came from the east (that is, from the ocean). Whatever energy was being delivered to the surface of the ocean was being sent offshore and away from my beach.

Result? There wasn't a lot of debris -- natural or manmade -- this week. Here's Zone N:

52 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 21 (trap scrap, 2 bits of rope, 7 claw bands, 11 trap coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 5 (3 wads of chewing gum, 1 bottlecap seal, 1 gum wrapper)
• Food-related metal/glass: 6 (bottlecap, 2 sea glass, can scrap, 2 wrappers)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 16 (inc. part of Xmas tree branch, pink doll dress, balloon scrap, o-ring, bottle cap, twist-tie)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 2
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 2 (leather sole scraps)

The winter usual, heavily dominated by fishing material and non-food plastics, including this adorable little rubbery-plastic doll's dress.

Size Zero

Otherwise, a typical -- if quiet -- week. As for Zone S?

20 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (bit of asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 9 (3 rope (2 very big pieces), claw band, 5 trap coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (can scrap)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 3 (small scraps)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 1 (wrapper)
• Misc./unique: 4 (leather scraps)

I won't pretend that this is exciting. I think even those two pieces of rope were just older bits finally unlocked from the ice.

Truth? It's wonderful to stroll a quiet beach and feel like it's actually clean, healthy. It's a reminder of a world we once had, and a world that our children deserve to have again. I'm glad for the respite. But I know it's an illusion. Even in the Arctic now, birds are dying with pieces of plastic lodged in their bellies. There is no safe haven from a throwaway world. Only, if we're lucky, a momentary reprieve. Next week, or the week after, or that gully-washer storm we'll get in April, reality will return home.

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* Note that big blast of winds from the east on Friday 2/25? That may play into the next collection report; wait and see.