Collection Report Oct 13, 2010

Walking the shores of Ocean Park way back in March, I realized that our modern world was leaving its footprint in places never meant for it. And since then, I've longed for spotless sand underfoot. Both for myself and for my little girl. It might be too much to say I got that wish on October 13 at Bay View. But I did get a brief glimpse of what it might feel like.

Late morning, not a soul around

The weather-worn path even invited, with its splash of color...

Autumn weaves its way toward the shore

As I started my slow pacing up and down from dune to tide, back and forth, something occurred to me. I wasn't stooping over very much. In fact, as the morning wore on, only a few larger bits & bobs marred the scene.

Whole pack of gum (package found nearby)

Tortured scrap of cup

All told, I brought in the lightest Zone N haul since my first visit to Bay View back in June.

55 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 12
• Fishing misc.: 0
• Food-related plastics: 6
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (scrap of aluminum can)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 5
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 24 (14 local + 10 floaters)
• Paper/wood: 4
• Misc./unique: 3 (scrap of cloth, gum pack, big of blue string)

Zone S told a very similar tale.

36 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 12
• Fishing misc.: 2 (rope scrap, bit of plastic coating from lobster trap)
• Food-related plastics: 2
• Food-related metal/glass: 3 (including another scrap of aluminum can)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 7
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 6 (1 local, 4 floaters, 1 plastic wrapper)
• Paper/wood: 2
• Misc./unique: 2

A grand total of only 91 bits of trash -- 1/4 of what I was finding at peak season! And most of it was quite small.

My enthusiasm is tempered. First, smaller doesn't equal better -- tiny bits of foam make it easily into tiny bellies. From there, they can ride up the food web and wreak their own special havoc. Second, the week saw strong offshore winds; floating garbage would have a tough time making it onto the beach, and dropped garbage would have an easy time making it into the ocean out of sight.

But still, sometimes it's OK just to stop and smile. This was a good day. And a window into a vista that once was, and can be again.

Ground Rules

OK. It's one thing -- a big thing -- to have the energy to do something about a problem.

It's another to know what you want to do, and how to measure your progress. It's not enough to say "The beach is trashed!" Or to pick up a random bagfull here and there and hope to learn anything useful about it. I had to set some guidelines.

What was I trying to do? Well, my first goal was (and is) to learn. Of all the questions swirling around in me, two were key: where was the trash coming from, and how fast was it coming? Wandering aimlessly, picking up bits here and there, wouldn't help answer. I thought about my first two trips. Both were pretty much the same: a stroll up and down the same stretch of beach, walking the apparent high-tide line, looking for generally easy-to-spot garbage. No heavy digging, no "cheating" by padding the trash count from an untouched section of beach.

It turned out, these seemed like pretty good controls. I could do this repeatedly, and start keeping track of what I found this way, week to week. With luck, I might be able to learn something. Score.

For those who don't know, Ocean Park is a community in York County, southern Maine (less than an hr from the NH border). It's 15 minutes from my front door, but a world apart. It's officially part of Old Orchard Beach, Maine's raucous tourist beach town. But it's a much quieter throwback to the lazy seaside villages of my parents' youth, with a small town square, old-time ice cream parlor, weathered clapboarded houses, dunegrass, and no neon or vulgar T-shirt shops. It's a good place.

This map (from maps.google.com) shows about where I decided to do my sweeps.

So I resolved to keep returning to the same spot, keep finding what was there to find, and keep recording it. On my second trip, March 19, I collected the following:

A half-hour walking, only picking the obvious stuff, only along the high-water line. Details to follow in the next post. As mentioned, the length that I walked was some 2 city blocks, maybe 400 feet, not a tenth of a mile. There are 3500 miles of coastline in Maine alone.

Introductions

In April 2007, my wife gave birth to a beautiful, perfect baby girl.

We were in our mid-30s. Happy, unattached, travelers. We enjoyed life, we looked forward to our future. Down inside, I think we had come to expect that when we ended, the future ended. For all we cared or knew.

Then our daughter arrived, and I knew what fathers have known for ... ever. The future would go on. Our girl would inherit it. Her eyes would see things that mine never would; yet her heirs, and theirs, would be part of a story that I had read, and shaped, and written. It was the dawning of a father's knowledge, that he has to change the world for his little girl.

Fast-forward to March 2010. The first warm day at the tail end of a Maine winter, and a quick family trip to the beach. Ocean Park, one of the most lovely sandy shores in Maine. Yet the end of February had seen violent storms, and they had left their mark. Clam shells and great heaps of kelp lined the highwater mark.

And with it, the detritus of mankind -- rope, a glove, a broken plastic spoon, fishing line, a torn beer can, its sharp edges poking up through the soft sand. And lobster traps, ripped from the deeps and dragged for miles, to be half-buried on the beach.

 

I'd seen the news about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The plastics that don't break down, that swirl in giant eddys & gyres in distant waters. The litter and debris that travels for thousands of miles, fouling pristine waters, washing up on pristine beaches. But this wasn't the Pacific. This was my beach, ten minutes from home. The more I looked, the more I saw. Part of a red plastic cup, more nylon rope, bright rubber bands. It was everywhere.

The next day, I came back to the beach, trash bag in hand. And I picked. Two blocks, a leisurely half-hour stroll, and the bag was full.

March 8, 2010 finds

I had barely scratched the surface. Yet I was carrying several pounds of rope, dozens of jagged pieces of aluminum can, shotgun shells, shreds of lobster traps, most of a pair of sunglasses, several plastic forks, a dozen beach umbrella bottoms, rubber tubing, architectural fragments, and 132 brightly colored rubber bands.

I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. I didn't know if there was anything I could do with it. But I knew I was at the beginning of something, and that this wasn't a bag just to be thrown in the dumpster and forgotten. Because this wasn't just my beach. This was my daughter's. And so I resolved to change the world. Somehow.