Curtis Cove Report - Jan 20, 2013

After a wild early winter settling into my new blog with the Portland Press Herald (woot!), traveling out of state, and dodging blizzards etc., am finally catching back up with some old beach collection reports.

Sunday, January 20, 2013. 10:15AM. Strong sea-breeze, winds picking up. 45 degrees but quickly on the way down.

Snow earlier in the week, mild overall. The wrack "smear" from January 11 was now shaped & packed into a very tight (and deep) coil.

Looks like there had been at least a couple very high & gentle tides. It nicely defined the back edge of the foreshore.

Down at the low foreshore, December's yellowish sand dump hadn't cleared out yet. It still buried all the pebbles & cobbles that usually litter the low ground.

Of course it carried its plastic load. Always.

As expected with so much seaweed to pore over, the haul was heavy.

176 pcs of rope, about 300 ft total

176 pcs of nonrope debris

352 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 176 (~300 ft)
• Fishing misc.: 111 (2 buoy sticks, 8 clawbands, 72 vinyl coating scraps, 11 trap tags, 6 vents, 5 bait bags, 5 bumpers/cleats, 2 trap parts)
• Food-related plastics: 13 (2-liter bottle base (cut off), 3 bottle caps, 5 cup scraps, 2 wrapper scraps, jug scrap, abraded spoon)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (crushed new can, can scrap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 22 (12 bag scraps, 2 balloon strings, cig lighter, cigarette, nonfood packaging, 2 cable ties, plant pot scrap, hook, base plate)
• Scrap plastics: 25 ( 11 > 1" , 14 < 1" ) 
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 3 (2 fabric scraps, glove)

A sign of high tides and high waves was the mass of bait bags and trap vents.

These generally only make it to the cove when high energy pushes the floatables up and over the rocky outcrop at the cove's head.

Another find caused a double-take. On the sand, this spoon looked bright and new:

But once I got it home I could see just how scratched and abraded it actually was. This piece of cutlery spent a lot of time on the seafloor, rolling back and forth. Somehow it arrived at Curtis Cove intact, though nicely "frosted."

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 12623
• Pcs fishing rope -- 3489
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4814