Curtis Cove Report - Mar 22, 2013

Friday, March 22. 12:50PM. 1/2 hr before low tide. Sunny, 37 degrees, light breeze off the ocean, calm water.

It had been a couple weeks since 3/9's visit. The low foreshore was still, well, very low and flat. Few cobbles & pebbles visible down by the water. Which suggests that there was still sand & stuff dragged/pulled from the backshore burying the underlying stones by the water's edge.

It had been a quiet week, light snows but no storms. A slow remolding was going on at the backshore. Waves pushed & stacked the wrack up into high cliff faces.

Look at all the bits of fishing rope dangling out from the side of the seaweed mountain! And there was a lot of pulverized wrack and coralline algae at the front of the "cliff" too.

I've learned that delicate, pulverized bits like this mean loads of lobster trap vinyl. And sure enough:

Overall an exceptionally busy & grueling day.

220 pcs of rope, about 200 ft total

531 pcs of nonrope debris

751 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 220
• Fishing misc.: 455 (405 vinyl trap scraps, 13 bait bags, 3 trap vents, 10 bumpers, trap tag, 18 claw bands, 2 bait tins, glove, 2 trap parts)
• Food-related plastics: 17 (12 cup scraps, bottlecap seal, wine cork seal, 2 food wrappers, straw)
• Food-related glass/metal: 6 (5 ripped aluminum can scraps, sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 11 (bag scrap, latex balloon scrap, plastic balloon string, CLOROX bottlecap, glove, plant ID stake, disposable plant-pot base, fabric, 2 cable ties, string)
• Scrap plastics: 37 ( 15 > 1" , 22 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 5 (fabric gloves/glove scraps)

The vinyl lobster trap bits are the standout, of course. But it was also a day heavy in scraps of red SOLO cups & the like:

And as an amusing side note, a lesson in how hard it is to quantify trash. Both of the pieces below count as -1- piece of lobster trap vinyl debris:

Yet the big chunk on the left (all just vinyl, the steel long-since rusted away from the inside!) would eventually break into hundreds of little flecks like that on the right.

So much trash.

Running YTD-2 counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 971
• Pcs fishing rope -- 390
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 405