Curtis Cove Report - Sep 13, 2012

Thursday September 13. 1:00PM, an hour before low-tide. Clean, bright, crisp, dry air, low 70s. High-tides low the past week, no storms, no energy. In fact, a little "stonework" our family made the week before still stood proudly:

Proudly-ish

This was a day for itinerant algae farmers:

Many gull prints

Feisty armor-clad warriors:

3" green crab defending its turf

And mislaid well-wishes:

Happy birthday, the gift keeps giving

Complicating things from a flotsam standpoint, it was also day of this:

Slumping muddy sand looks just like a lava flow

Very little new stuff came in this week. It had been another scouring week, but a slow-burn scour. Super-saturated sand and mud at the high foreshore slumped and oozed its way far downslope, dragging and burying debris with it. (The balloon above was almost completely buried when I first saw it.)

It was also a week of "poor sorting." Cobbles, pebbles, gravel, sand, and wrack were mixed up and smeared up and down the foreshore. Leaving practically no distinct bands of collected debris.

With so much slumping, burying, and tumbling back into the sea, this collection was bound to be limited. And it was.

18 pcs of rope, about 20 ft total

86 pcs of non-rope debris

104 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 18
• Fishing misc.: 56 (48 trap vinyl coating scraps, 2 bait bags, 6 trap parts)
• Food-related plastics: 7 (6 cup scraps, 1 straw)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (1 brand-new aluminum can, 1 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 9 (mylar balloon, balloon string, old non-food bottlecap, cigarette tip, worn bucket handle, old lego, 2 non-food packaging, baggie)
• Scrap plastics: 10 (5 > 1", 5 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 2 (cords)

104 finds, the "smallest" so far. What did manage to wash in was generally very old and abraded. Like this bucket lid:

Brittle, faded, abraded. Old.

Or this squirt-bottle cap:

This one has a long story

So a day of jumbles, slumps, buried debris, hidden debris. And an ever-changing coast abutting an ever-changing sea.

What will the next week bring?

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9228
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1876
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4340