Curtis Cove Report - Jul 27, 2012

Friday July 27, 1PM. Curtis Cove. And the beach roses are in bloom.

Temps were in the 70s, with heavy clouds & heavier air. The skies threatened a couple times, but at best pelted the ground with a few small drizzles.

Lunar landscape

I've always wanted to see how long it really takes debris to return to the sand here. It had only been 4 days since my July 23 collection. What would the beach hold? Well.... a lot of this:

A wrack line of seaweed and plastic

Depressing -- and eye-opening. After an hour or so on the beach, here's what I pulled up from my 150-foot zone.

38 pcs of rope, about 35 ft total

573 pcs of non-rope debris

611 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 3 (2 vinyl floormat scraps, vinyl upholstery scrap)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 38 (all rope)
• Fishing trap gear: 396 (383 vinyl trap scraps, 11 bumpers, 2 bait bags)
• Fishing misc.: 45 (1 fishing line, 44 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 32 (26 #6 cup scraps, 3 bottle-cap o-rings, 2 candy wrappers, 1 bread tie)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (can scraps)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 15 (1 bandaid, 1 comb fragment, 1 toy sticker, 7 cable ties, 1 windshield washer bottlecap, 1 medicine blister pack, 1 'impatiens' plant ID tag, 1 rubber cord, 1 "DENT PIK")
• Scrap plastics: 71 (20 >1", 51 scraps <1")
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 9 (1 glove, 8 fabric pieces)

611, in just 4 days. Crazy! And of course tilted extremely heavily toward lobstering debris, including another insane haul of vinyl trap flecks. But the waves also brought many things that had no business being in the sea. Including:

A faded sticker from a toy

Windshield washer fluid bottle cap

'Impatiens' tag from planter/garden

Battered comb -- where's the rest?

"DENT PIK"?  Not even in Google!

Vinyl flooring scrap

Vinyl upholstery scrap

And of course poignant reminders of why plastics don't belong in the ocean in any amount:

Sealife-nibbled/poked cup scrap

Of all the finds on Friday, exactly one -- a candy wrapper -- was a local drop. Everything else came from the ocean. It was there because everything we use -- and lose -- is now plastic.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 6396
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1650
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 2779