Curtis Cove Report - Sep 27, 2012

Thursday, September 27, 2012, 1:30PM. Hour and a half before low tide. My first autumn visit to the cove.

One final hurrah

This was a day of dragonflies, white butterflies, honeybees. Color. The last bits of life and warmth before the end. Even the rockpools teemed with vibrance & life!

Look closely, you'll see at least a dozen krill in this pic

The past week saw some seriously windy days inland. But the waves here at the beach hadn't crested very high. And a lot of blow-down spoke of winds howling offshore, not on. The same blow-down also revealed at least a couple once-buried goodies.

I see you, bait bag!

The sorting was better this week than last. But there were still jumbles of rock massed here and there -- including an impressive rock wall built up at the back of the southern foreshore.

Chock-a-block with new & old wrack

So, what did all that vibrancy & energy mean for debris? Well, this is one clue:

The wrong colors

It was going to be a bigger day than last week. Here's what I ended up with:

33 pcs of rope, about 30 ft total

93 pcs of nonrope debris

126 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 1
• Fishing rope/net: 33
• Fishing misc.: 45 (22 vinyl coating scraps, 3 bait bags, 2 bumpers, 4 trap parts, 3 trap tags, 2 fishing lines, 6 claw bands, shotgun shell, poly/rubber glove scrap, shotgun shell wadding)
• Food-related plastics: 11 (bottle scrap, 2 bottlecaps, 7 cup scraps, food wrapper scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (beer bottle)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 14 (mylar balloon, 2 trash bag scraps, 5 cords, duct tape, plug, lock cover (?), 2 cable ties, mouse rollerball)
• Scrap plastics: 19 ( 11 > 1" , 8 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 2 (metal clip, sock scrap)

2 1/2 times the amount of debris this week compared to the previous. And this week was also interesting both for how large many of the scraps were, and for how lightweight.

The soak tank

Curtis Cove is actually notable for how much debris comes in from the seafloor. So to have this much floatable this week? Something strange in the winds & waves, for sure.

Also this week, my most unexpected find yet:

Hello World!

Yes, an old-school rubber mouse ball. If you can imagine it, you can imagine it in the ocean.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9404
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1922
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4370