Curtis Cove Report - June 21, 2013

After a July filled with unforeseen challenges & setbacks, The Flotsam Diaries is back in the saddle!

And back with far too many collection reports to catch up on. In the interest of at least getting them done, please excuse the brevity of the next several, starting with this.

Friday, June 21. 3:15PM. Going on low-tide. Bright sunshine, a few clouds, mild breeze.

Brought my daughter, who had a blast scouring the pebbles and exploring.

By this day, lots of life was already growing throughout the backshore. Nature was quickly healing the damage from winter's storms. It was clearly a low-energy week at the beach. Little changed from before, with no large clusters of rocks or clumps of algae tossed up.

In the end, a calm week. Much of the plastic I found lay higher up, possibly teased out from the very last rotting of winter's wrack.

The haul for the day:

28 pcs of rope, about 25 ft total

124 pcs of nonrope debris

152 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 28
• Fishing misc.: 73 (52 vinyl trap coating scraps, 3 bumpers/cleats, 3 bait bags, trap tag, 4 trap parts, 9 claw bands, balled-up fishing line)
• Food-related plastics: 13 (bottle scrap, bottlecap seal, 7 cup scraps, 2 bread tags, one "buttery spread" pack, fork handle)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (bottlecap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 16 (waxed floss, hair clip, 2 bandaids, 4 cable ties, cord, lens cover (?), woven material, crate seal, duct tape, 2 end caps, medicine blister pack)
• Scrap plastics: 16 ( 5 > 1" , 11 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 5 (4 seaglass, fabric scrap)

By numbers, a fairly low-trash day for Curtis Cove. But interesting nonetheless. This bread tag, stamped "July 14," certainly didn't mean July 14, 2013:

This coffee-cup lid (which is polystyrene and sinks in seawater) shows evidence of a -lot- of bites & nips from its time at sea:

I'm forever finding these crate seals washing up. I'm assuming they probably have something to do with fishing -- everything that washes up in Maine on a large scale seems to. But I'm not sure what. Crated bait, cut open at sea maybe?

I wonder what small person lost this bandaid. On what beach. In what year?

Stop and look at the next thing you find washed in. It's got a story to tell.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 4311
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1655
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 1753