Collection Report - August 30, 2013

A return to beach and late summer memories.

Friday Aug 30, 1PM. Bright sun. Sea breeze, upper 70s, puffy clouds in the sky at different layers. The beginning of Labor Day weekend. (A few families wandering around the cove at the far end, enjoying the last of summer.)

In the past 2 1/2 weeks since my August 11 visit, the waves had built mounds & collection spots of pebbles & cobbles along the back of the foreshore. But there was still a mass fresh green on the low foreshore -- algae still growing, not being ripped up. So whatever was going on, it was low energy overall.

Also, underfood I felt a lot of fine, soft sand blown up from foreshore onto the backshore. Dry sand, low waves, and seabreezes blowing it up, up, up. Gorgeous sand! Fine and white and soft as dust.

Sadly, lower down was anything but gorgeous. It was a shocking day for vinyl. The knolls of cobbles helped slow the water down and let the wrack/vinyl settle out into carpets. Every nook and layer of carpet was just flooded with the vinyl coatings of dead & rusted-out lobster traps.

I followed big smears of wrack-carpet and vinyl far down dozens of yards toward the water. I picked & picked all I could. But I know I didn't get it all. This handful came from a dozen square feet:

What a day. Yet in spite of all the vinyl, I collected exactly ZERO pcs of rope! Another sign of low energy. Big things like rope, trap vents, large plastic chunks -- they need energy to get into the cove. The tiny vinyl bits are the opposite, they like it calm.

And calm it was.

1065 pcs of nonrope debris

1065 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 0
• Fishing misc.: 972 (928 vinyl lobster trap coating scraps (!), 3 trap parts, 2 bumpers, 38 claw bands, buoy o-ring scrap)
• Food-related plastics: 30 (4 bottlecap o-rings, 19 cup scraps, 2 bread tags, mini-fork, spoon, 3 straws)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (aluminum can bottom)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 19 (latex balloon, cigarette, hair band, toy truck front (old), 3 tubing pcs, 3 plant stakes, 8 upholstery scraps, cable tie)
• Scrap plastics: 35 ( 8 > 1" , 27 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 1 (paper towel)
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 7 (5 sea glass, fabric scrap, pc of leather)

This here is the story of the Gulf of Maine:

Does anything else need to be said, really?

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 7064
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1780
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 3818