Saturday, July 27, 7:50AM. Gorgeous sunny morning, an hour before low tide. It had been two weeks since I was here last.
Everything was alive, in bloom, greening out. The backshore was ringed by beach roses; the low foreshore full of pebbles, cobbles, and even boulders. This day we were coming off one glorious week following a week of heat, heat, heat! But there had been no violent storms to speak of.
Still, there had been change over the two weeks. The pebbles at the back of the foreshore were scooped into clumps and clusters. Not particularly well-sorted -- largely jumbled, but changed
Calm weeks mean heavy, small bits of plastic here at Curtis Cove. And the motherlode was there on the mid-foreshore, near the beginning of the live algae. Where the steep slope on the back crunches into the flatter jumble of cobbles lower, the outwash slowed and the small heavy plastics fell out.
It was going to be a busy day.
 |
| 11 pcs of rope, about 15 ft total |
 |
| 287 pcs of nonrope debris |
298 finds:
- Bldg material/furniture: 0
- Foam/styrofoam: 1
- Fishing rope/net: 11
- Fishing misc.: 237 (18 claw bands, 2 fishing line, 212 vinyl scraps, 5 trap parts)
- Food-related plastics: 13 (11 cup scraps, 2 bottlecap o-rings)
- Food-related glass/metal: 0
- Nonfood/unknown plastics: 13 (2 mylar balloon scraps, toy lid/top, 3 bandaids, hairband, 2 cable ties, clothes size tag, 3 cords)
- Scrap plastics: 22 ( 6 > 1" , 16 < 1" )
- Paper/wood: 0
- Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (seaglass)
The bites and pokes on the plastic bits were unsettling, as usual.
But the story of this day was the lobster trap vinyl.
It's going to be the story of many days, I'll bet.
Running YTD counts:
- Total pcs of litter -- 5232
- Pcs fishing rope -- 1762
- Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 2285
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