Collection Report July 15, 2011

Another perfect morning, and a message from the dawn...

No, you're not wigging out, it's upside-down

If you want to be first to the beach in Maine in July, you've got to get there before 7:30AM.

This was going to be an interesting pickup. For one thing, energy in the waves had brought in various sea-going bits and bobs. From organics all alone...

"Mush" bits pock-marking outflow

...to organics tagging along on plastics:

Tagging along on a piece of plastic

Algae/bryozoa on this plastic sleeve

And then, to top of the day, another one of these.

Awesome. Another one.

Again? Really? Anyway, the totals. Zone N:

323 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 35
• Fishing misc.: 13 (rope, 4 twine, 5 claw bands, trap tag, shotgun shell, bag of bait)
• Food-related plastics: 38 (including 24 food/straw wrappers/packaging!)
• Food-related metal/glass: 13 (5 caps, 3 glass scraps, 4 foil wrappers)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 52 (14 plastic bags/scraps, 8 personal care (lids/medicines), 4 toys/scraps, 4 ribbon, wristband, 2 firecrackers, pen cap, umbrella top, bracelet, 5 scraps >1", 11 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 70 (67 filters, 3 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 94 (57 firecracker sticks, 5 wood scraps, 32 napkins/random paper)
• Misc./unique: 8 (thong underwear, 2 socks, pair of shoes, flipflop, string, piece of fabric)

Wow. Now that's a lot of junk for one week. Largely explained by firecrackers & smokers. But still, an amazing amount of garbage. And a very colorful day, with a mix of yesterday and yesteryear. A couple of the highlights below. First, more of those Canadian lobster claw bands, all pristine.

Found a dozen, or more, since June 2

Too many of these have come in now to be coincidence. Some kind of incident happened in Canadian waters in early May (can't say whether big or small), and we're still seeing the repercussions of it down here. The ocean's all connected after all.

The other highlight: a gray pen cap that looked a -lot- like the weird little firecrackers that have also been washing up throughout the same time period. (Related??)

Spot the pen cap (OK, it's easy)

Hopefully you see now my confusion when the first of these little busted-up pieces of gray hollow plastic came in!

On to Zone S:

19 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 6
• Fishing misc.: 1 (fishing rope twine)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 7 (3 bags/scraps, tampon applicator, and tampon (unused), firecracker, 1 scrap <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 5
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

19 finds, against 323 just 150 feet away?? That's not natural. Maybe the condos bordering Zone S have hired cleaning help, or are voluntarily picking up. Dunno. I doubt this stretch is suddenly so clean simply because of encroaching dunes. Anyway, other than that, and yet another tampon applicator (which does seem completely unrelated to the unused tampon and tampon bag also found), Zone S is dull.

So there you go. A wild day, a good day to be a Flotsam Diarist. And more proof that every week may have its share of surprises.