Tuesday May 28, 2013. 8:15AM. Bright sun, a few clouds off coast. Upper 50s. Incredibly low low tide. Water receded out in places 50+ feet further out than I'd ever seen.
Standing on the northern side of the cove I could almost hop across to the south!
Even with all this exposed, I at first was a bit disappointed by what seemed like not a lot of life. But as always, the key is to look closer. Here is a sandworm wriggling back into the mud, while the sand-cast of another lies like spaghetti next to it.
And a lovely surprise -- a "bushy-backed nudibranch"! A kind of shell-less snail that you can find in intertidal areas if you're lucky
And then, the reason I started visiting beaches in earnest 3+ years ago. Plastic. These are the ubiquitous bits of vinyl from rotted lobster traps that I find every week in the tide pools.
Higher up on the beach, what have we here? The string to a balloon?
Nope. The entire balloon, mylar.
Another week, another remnant of someone's celebration washing up.
On to the finds...
(Same tech disaster that killed my May 15 rope photo killed May 28.)
68 pcs of fishing rope, about 80 ft overall
 |
| 69 pcs of nonrope debris |
137 finds:
- Bldg material/furniture: 0
- Foam/styrofoam: 0
- Fishing rope/net: 68
- Fishing misc.: 39 (5 bumpers, 19 vinyl trap coatings, 3 bait bag scraps, 8 trap parts, vent, fishing line, claw band, rope connector rod)
- Food-related plastics: 12 (2 bottle caps, 2 bottles, 7 cup scraps, triangle-cut sandwich container)
- Food-related glass/metal: 3 (can scrap, 2 sea glass)
- Nonfood/unknown plastics: 10 (mylar balloon, large rug offcut, 2 flowers, fabric scrap, 5 cable ties)
- Scrap plastics: 4 ( all > 1" )
- Paper/wood: 0
- Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (shoe string)
blah blah
Fake flowers never die.
Drink bottles have a rough life on the seabed. But it's even rougher for the sea creatures that eat chunks of sharp rigid plastic.
When even multi-pour salt shakers are made of plastic, they leave a plastic legacy in the ocean.
Running YTD counts:
- Total pcs of litter -- 3817
- Pcs fishing rope -- 1443
- Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 1640
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