Collection Report May 30, 2012

Down to wire for Year 2 at Bay View. This installment: Wednesday, May 30. Noon. 60 degrees. Foggy, overcast skies.

I missed the previous week due to rain, rain... And in the interim, Memorial Day weekend had come and gone! Still, the beach didn't look that different. There was the same old wrack line of dried-out organics. Same steep shoreface. Dunegrass encroaching & spreading as it has all year. Sand cusps from the beached sandbar high & pronounced. Basically, all just as it had been all spring.


With a few exceptions -- signs that Memorial Day had in fact come and gone. Such as (1) The return of the Bait Tank cigarette butt bin:

(2) Buried beer bottle bingo:

(3) Flotsam forts:

(4) Thoughtless chain-smokers at the "thinking log":

(5) And a new found toy for the collection:

All proof that the lazy days of winter and spring were past, and unofficial summer had begun. Despite the cold & damp of the day. So what was left behind in the sands? Zone N:

116 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 59
• Fishing misc.: 0
• Food-related plastics: 15 (bottle, 4 bottlecaps, bottlecap o-ring, 4 food wrappers, 3 straw wrappers, 2 candy wrappers)
• Food-related metal/glass: 2 (bottle, foil wine bottle top)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 61 (3 packaging scraps, tape, string/cord, 2 scraps >1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 24 (23 cigs, 1 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 8 (paper scraps)
• Misc./unique: 1 (swiffer cloth)

A local, summer signature. Except... so much foam. No idea where it all came from. Because looking at it, it's a little bit of everything! Insulation, coffee cups, coolers, squishy foam toys, clamshell packs... Just, everything. Some certainly washed/blown in. Portland, Maine is now considering banning styrofoam in the city. From my experience the past couple of years, I think it's high time.

On to Zone S:

66 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 53
• Fishing misc.: 0
• Food-related plastics: 1 (candy wrapper)
• Food-related metal/glass: 3 (glass jar, jar lid, foil)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 3 (watergun plug, 2 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 5
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

The glass jar was a half-full jar of pasta sauce. Random! And then there's all the foam & styrofoam here too. Tons of it. Including many of the same-looking bits as Zone N, and bits that had clearly been nipped & pecked by wildlife (fish? crabs? seagulls?):

Not just ugly. Far worse than just being ugly.

So there we have it. May 30. Winter is over. Tourists are back, at least a little. Time circles back around. And the beach tells the tale.