Collection Report May 11, 2012

Friday, May 11. Bayview, 10AM. Greetings from a smooth, glassy, muddy low tide...

The flat terrace means that March's sandbar was now gone. Where?

Riding high & dry. Bayview's cusps had risen higher than even the base of the foredunes. Pushed upward several feet by the heaps of fresh sandbar sand brought in by the waves.

There was little other than sand and old reeds to see. The huge ridges made a very steep shoreface -- no surprise that few things would beach and stay beached. But what was there was fascinating. A piece of tomorrow...

Sea snail eggs on a lobster trap scrap

And a piece of yesterday...

1997 trap tag... bleached but perfect

As for debris? Zone N:

37 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (shingle tarpaper)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 15
• Fishing misc.: 1 (rope)
• Food-related plastics: 3 (bottle, end-corner of food wrapper, straw)
• Food-related metal/glass: 2 (sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 8 (foam float, rubber chunk, 3 cords, 3 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 6
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 1 (chunk of wax)

Anybody know what that foam would have been used for?

Meanwhile, down in Zone S, a practically clean slate:

6 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 3 (fishing lure, trap tag scrap, trap scrap -- not pictured)
• Food-related plastics: 1 (straw)
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 1 (scrap >1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

So, a dead sandbar, a steep shoreface, a clean beach. Yet 5 miles south, at Curtis Cove, this is what's washing in:

May 17, 2012

What a difference a few miles makes.