Collection Report June 23, 2012

Saturday, June 23, 2012. 8:00AM Bay View beach, Saco, Maine.

Summer in Maine, back again

This day marked a very big milestone -- the completion of my second full year studying Bay View! Though there is much to reflect on, for now, into the collection.

The fierce storm of June 3 was already fading from Bay View's mind.

Much of the advance line of dunegrass survived; later tides & winds quickly resculpted the shore to brush over the erosion & damage. In fact, the storm & outwash actually created a nice, long flat terrace between the dunegrass & foreshore. The perfect place for summer crowds to pitch their tents. Nature is a marvel.

Speaking of summer crowds, they're back. The trash signature proved that. Zone N:

138 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 10
• Fishing misc.: 6 (4 rope, claw band, trap tag)
• Food-related plastics: 20 (2 bottles, 4 bottlecaps, 2 cup-top scraps, 11 food wrappers, straw)
• Food-related metal/glass: 10 (bottle, bottlecap, 8 pcs foil)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 34 (8 plastic bags/baggies, hairclip, 4 scraps <1", bucket handle, 2 figurines, sand rake, 2 lightsticks, shovel handle, 9 plastic packaging, lubricating oil tube, black tape, strapping, tarp scrap, mesh)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 34 (32 filters, 2 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 22
• Misc./unique: 2 (fabric scraps)

Yes, the summer crowds are back. And as always, they congregate at Zone N, leaving the southern area much freer of debris. Zone S:

49 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 7
• Fishing misc.: 4 (rope, trap scrap, trap tag, shotgun shell)
• Food-related plastics: 9 (bottle, 3 bottlecaps, 4 food wrappers, straw)
• Food-related metal/glass: 3 (can, 2 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 12 (baggie, 3 balloons, balloon ribbon, bleach bottlecap, 3 scraps >1", 2 scraps <1", nonfood packaging)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 9
• Paper/wood: 4
• Misc./unique: 1 (fabric)

No surprises here. This is the debris that beachgoers leave at a sunny, summery beach. I saw it in summer 2010. And summer 2011. And now summer 2012. How many more summers, until we finally change the game?

---

And there we are. Full circle, again. Two summers, two falls, two winters, two springs. 14,000 pieces of trash, Hurricane Earl, TS Irene, the December Storm of 2010, and June's no-name beast. Ice crystals, sand dollars, rivulets, beach cusps. Dog walkers, wrack lines, sea glass, dunegrass. Sand bars, beached boat, demolished convent, seal carcass.

Bay View has been such an eye-opening place. It taught me that in a plastic world, there is no "away." Yet now I find that lesson coming home to roost about 5 miles south, at Curtis Cove. Where there are no tourists, but there's more garbage per foot than the worst day that Bay View threw at me. So much more to learn, and to share.

For the moment, I leave Bay View to rest, though probably to return now & then. Curtis Cove will keep me -- and sadly generations after me -- plenty busy.

Collection Report April 25, 2012

Wednesday, April 25. 9:15AM. 55 degrees, bright sun, hour after low tide. Had been away for two weeks, as I spent the previous week visiting The Mouse with the family. First missed week on-site since June last year! So, what would the extra week's worth of tides bring in the way of flotsam?

This, and... well, not a lot more. This can was actually among the most interesting finds of the day. More on why down below. But as you can see by this shot...

...the beach was again a clean slate. The little wrack that did exist (mostly in Zone N) was old, dried reeds from 2011 still rolling around:

I've gone on for some months about the changes at Bay View over the past year. But with spring now "sprung," this image tell the story the best:

In an age of global sea-level rise and beach loss, the dunes at Bay View are actually advancing. 20 feet down the beach slope just in the past year! That can only happen if the energy of the sea lets it happen. A few bad waves, and you get this:

The energy coming in here is just weaker than it was a year ago. Waves aren't making it as high up the slope. And they're carrying far less detritus -- natural and manmade -- than before. The best logic behind this is that the seafloor is shifting. Sand bars have reared their heads at Bay View during very low tides. Natural buffers, absorbing the fury of the ocean -- and blocking seafloor debris. For how long? Don't know.

But for now, they cause this result. Zone N:

31 finds:

• Building materials: 4 (asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 4 (3 foam scraps, 1 cup bottom)
• Fishing misc.: 0
• Food-related plastics: 3 (2 wrappers, 1 straw)
• Food-related metal/glass: 2 (can, can scrap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 6 (2 toys, tennisball, package scrap, 2 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 11
• Paper/wood: 1 (paper scrap)
• Misc./unique: 0

A few locally lost toys for my daughter's collection. A few scraps. A few thoughtless smokers. A rotted can...

Quickly over to Zone S:

9 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 2
• Fishing misc.: 3 (fishing line, shotgun shell, shell wadding)
• Food-related plastics: 1 (bottlecap)
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 0
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 2
• Paper/wood: 1 (bedpost finial)
• Misc./unique: 0

A bedpost finial? Really?

So the game here has changed. But back to that aluminum can.

You've surely seen those enviromentalist site lists, showing how long things take to break down:

If you say "It takes 200 years for an aluminum can to break down!" and I can find one that's rotting away after ~6 months, you risk losing me for everything else you try to say. We all love round numbers; but we're a little more partial to our own eyes.

Collection Report April 9, 2012

Good morning from Bay View beach, Monday April 9. 8:05AM, low tide. Cool, colorful morning with bands of thick low clouds.

Being just after full moon, this "spring tide" was one of the lowest of the month. And again in the distance you can see Bay View's new sandbar peeking out from the receding waters. The same sandbar that seems to be vastly changing the shape of the beach this year -- and altering how much washes in, organic or otherwise.

The ultra-low tide exposed a complete bed of live sand dollars, including these folks:

"Fancy meeting you here"

And the terrace had another surprise -- in one small section the churning waves had sorted & collected a pile of boulders:

Only this one spot in some
600 ft of beach did this

A little more of the magic of the ocean.

The latest overnight high-tide -- also being a spring tide -- was one of the stronger ones since last November, pushing all the old wrack almost up to the dune's edge, leaving a blank slate in its place.

Much of this is new, clean sand dragged in, probably from the sandbar. Outside my zones, lobster traps that had been fully exposed were now half-buried in soft sand. All that energy & sand -- but zero new wrack -- is usually a harbinger of a small collection.

And sure enough, Zone N:

30 finds:

• Building materials: 9 (6 asphalt, 2 concrete, 1 asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 4 (3 rope, 1 claw band)
• Food-related plastics: 3 (straw, PS cup top, microwave plate scrap)
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (gum wrapper)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 2 (rubber chunk, sand bag)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 7
• Paper/wood: 1 (paper cup)
• Misc./unique: 2 (cords)

The only find of note:

When sandbags are made from plastic fiber, and they fail & wash out to sea, they don't go away.

Zone S:

9 finds:

• Building materials: 3 (asphalt, shingle, brick sliver)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 3 (1 rope, 2 lobster trap vinyl scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 0
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

Bay View's new personality started weaving itself together in late November, and it continues. The gunk is all out there; it's just chosen to spare Bay View beach this winter and spring.

About 5 miles south, at Curtis Cove in Biddeford, the story is vastly different. Here's just the derelict fishing rope that washed into 150 feet of beach there during the same week:

Think you know what's happening in the ocean? Dig deeper.

Say It

If you see it, and walk by it, and forget about it, so will everyone else. That moment hinges on you. It's you who has the power to say "Enough."

April 23, 2012
Mr. Robert Collins
Theater Manager
The Cinemagic & IMAX in Saco
779 Portland Road Saco, ME 04072

Dear Mr. Collins:
Yesterday, Earth Day, our family came to Saco Cinemagic to see “The Lorax.” Imagine our shock to see this scene lining the edges of Cinemagic’s parking lot:

It was similar all around the perimeter. 100s of feet just completely trashed.

Obviously litter isn’t just a problem at Cinemagic Saco. It seems it’s everywhere now. Streets, gutters, parks, and of course swirls of garbage in the ocean. I study what washes up onto local beaches, and the amount of pollution in the Gulf of Maine is horrible.

But if we allow scenes like this at our places of business, we’re just making it all worse.

I hope you will take the time to send out crews more regularly to the perimeter of the parking lot, and make it clear that litter & garbage just aren’t OK.

Thanks for your time.

Sincerely,


Harold Johnson
“The Flotsam Diaries”

Sent Tuesday, April 24. Will post response if one comes.

Collection Report March 12, 2012

Monday, March 12. 9:50AM. Just past low tide. A warm one this day, bright sun & energy in the air.

When I stepped onto the beach I was greeted by a new sight:

Low-tide sandbar exposed!

Never seen this sandbar before, not in two years! Pretty excellent evidence that the seabottom offshore is shifting and moving. And if that's happening, pretty good evidence for why this year's collection numbers are so different from last.

With this impediment in the way, the wash-ins were sure to be low. Which gave me a chance to reflect on the beauty of the moment. The stillness of the slack water left behind by the retreating tide, with the gurgling surf juuuuuust out of reach.

Rippled bar

Snail and worm tracks

Gotcha!

Within 10 minutes the turning tide had inundated this peaceful backwater, churning up the ripples & tracks, burying the bar back under silty sea. The ephemeral beauty of the beach.

On to the collection. Zone N:

26 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (asphalt chunks)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 2
• Fishing misc.: 5 (rope scrap, lobster trap bumper, trap vinyl coating scrap, 2 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (straw, bottlecap)
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (tiny can scrap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 5 (baggie, toy thermometer, tennis ball, vinyl floormat scrap, 1 scrap <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 5
• Paper/wood: 1 (tissue)
• Misc./unique: 2 (rag scrap, leather strap)

The thermometer, dropped that week by someone's little boy or girl, will make a nice addition to my daughter's collection. Otherwise, it was the usual shlock -- and this year's usual amount. Down to Zone S:

13 finds:

• Building materials: 4 (2 asphalt chunks, 1 concrete, 1 vinyl-coatedmetal fencing)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 3 (2 lobster trap vinyl scraps, shotgun shell)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (bottlecap, mint "tin")
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 0
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 3 (2 filters, 1 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

As far back as December I suspected this year was going to play out differently than last. A month ago I started seeing very old seabottom stuff that suggested the seafloor was shifting. And on this day I got to see the effects of that shift -- if briefly -- down at the end of the beach.

The ocean is ever changing. What it chooses to send up onto the sands can tell you a lot about what's going on beneath the waves. If you can figure out how to see it.

A Tale of Two Winters

From Dec 2010 - Feb 2011, I collected, on average 180 pieces of manmade debris at my beach, Bayview, in Saco, Maine each week.

From Dec 2011 - Feb 2012, that number was an average of 60 pieces each week!

Anyone following my Collection Reports has seen that the amount of debris I'm pulling off the beach has nosedived. It would be very tempting to see this as amazing news. I'd be tempted too, if not for all the research I'm now conducting simultaneously on a second beach further south.*

This, plus 153 individual scraps of fishing rope, came from my
second beach, Curtis Cove in Biddeford, for a total of 249
pieces of junk from 150 ft of shoreline. In one week in Feb.

No, the debris is still swirling in the Gulf of Maine, as fiercely as ever. But for some reason, starting in mid-November, it largely stopped washing up on Bayview beach.

Why?

There are two really intriguing possibilities. The first has to do with a strange phenomenon called internal waves. The ocean isn't one big homogenous lump of water. It is stratified -- often sharply -- with fresh, "light" layers on top and saltier, "dense" layers down below. When the stratification is strong, energy that gets put into the ocean (from storm or surface wind, etc.) can propagate along the boundaries between those layers. It's the cause of what's known as "dead water" -- when, say, a boat propellor that usually pushes the boat forward instead sends all its energy just into creating these underwater waves, and the boat hardly moves at all.

What does this have to do with beach debris? Well if the winter of 2010/11 was a time of high stratification between layers, more ocean energy may have traveled through these undersea conduits, churning up the seabottom and its debris. This huge wrackline from December 2010...

...may have gotten its beginnings from a churned-up seafloor thanks to shallow-water internal waves. Contrast that view with this winter's:

All winter long there has been almost zero seaborne wrack. No wrack = no plastic. Are the internal waves weaker this year, or even shut down? It's been an exceptionally mild winter in Maine. Freakishly mild. Does Saco Bay need bone-chilling air masses to stratify its waters in winter? We've also had fairly little rain or snow all winter long. Does the bay need fresh river runoff to stratify it?

I don't know. But it's one thought, and it's got some support from oceanographers I've spoken with.

The second thought comes from the few curious finds that have surfaced. Twice in the past month, I've pulled from the sands pulltab-era aluminum tops from old rusted-away steel cans.

2/29: Generic style used ~1970-1980

3/12: Coke can used only '71-'72

A third 30+ year-old pulltab aluminum top down in Curtis Cove makes 3 in a month! Which makes me wonder if an offshore sandbar has shifted, revealing 30-year-old flotsam and dampening the energy coming into Bayview. Just this week, at an ultralow low-tide, I snapped this muddy bar which peeked out of the water at the very edge of the tide line:

I've never seen anything like a sandbar exposed out at Bayview before. The ripples show that it's migrating landward. If it has bigger cousins just offshore, and they're steep enough to cut off inflow of seafloor debris, that may be what's stopping the debris from coming in.

As usual, I have more questions than answers. Clearly there's some energy at the beach. I've documented huge sandloads dumped up on the shore this winter, as well as several lobster traps. Yet the stuff that would get whipped up, suspended, and dragged in -- like vinyl, polystyrene, seaweed -- it's just not coming.

Whatever's keeping it from coming in, it's out there. And it will start washing into Bayview again. It's just a question of when. For the moment, it leaves me with the tantalizing question of "Why?"

---

* More specifics on this beach, Curtis Cove in Biddeford, in a future post, soon!

Collection Report Feb 13-15, 2012

February 13, 2012. 2PM, an hour or so before high-tide. Yet another bright, sunny day. A very cold morning, so I left my collection bags at home, figuring everything would be iced hard to the ground. I figured wrong.

No ice here!

Oh well. I stuck around to survey the landscape. There had definitely been energy here, at least judging by the pebbles sculpted & blasted up onto the beach face. But...

Lake Placid?

...Where on earth was that energy? All the way out to the horizon, the sea surface on this day was as glazed and dead as it's been all winter.

The answer is fairly simple. The energy's been where it's been all winter, when it's been around at all. On the seafloor. The swash zone (where the high tide waves break and splash up the slope) was littered with shell, pebbles, gravel -- all heavy, dense seafloor debris.

What isn't typical about this week is one way that energy manifested itself on the 13th:

The artist at work

The ocean has cast up pebble mounds before. But always in even rows, spaced consistently down the beach. Never one massive headland of cobbles and pebbles sitting all on its own! Yet again, nature amazes.

At any rate, given the lack of bags on my person on the 13th, I came back on the 15th. About 9:45AM, an hour after low-tide. In one sense the view was the same:

This actually is a different pic from the first,
look at the tide!

In another sense it was quite different:

That's where the rock pile was two days before;
by the 15th, blown utterly out of existence

What a world. Anyway, the wracklines were about the same, and the finds among them seemed about the same. So with that prelude, on to them. Zone N:

52 finds:

• Building materials: 23 (20 asphalt, 2 tile, 1 brick)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 13 (7 rope, 4 claw bands, 1 monofilament line, 1 trap vinyl coating scrap)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 9 (seaglass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 2 (plastic plug, tieback)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 2
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 2 (fabric scraps)

Can't pretend there's much interesting here, except maybe the big haul of asphalt.

Down to Zone S:

63 finds:

• Building materials: 27 (7 brick, 20 asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 3
• Fishing misc.: 5 (3 rope - 1 v large, 2 monofilaments)
• Food-related plastics: 1 (bottle)
• Food-related metal/glass: 8 (7 sea glass, foil wrapper)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 8 (bandaid, plastic lumber, engine belt, 2 scraps >1", 3 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 7
• Paper/wood: 1
• Misc./unique: 3 (2 fabric scraps, metal fencing)

The badly tortured plastic bottle still had its cap on, but scrapes on its underside had opened it & filled it with sand. Surely a long-suffering wash-in. As were the very grubby and frayed bits of rope (which I also found in Zone N above). The seaglass was a treat, as it's still rare to find more than one or two, no matter what the sea state.

So a varied week. Dead waves, yet heavy seafloor energy -- heavy enough to bring up asphalt, brick, glass, stone. Curiously, no tubeworm casings. Wherever in the surf zone these little homebuilders live, they escaped the week's fury. As did the densest/heaviest of plastics -- the vinyls. Only one, maybe two examples. The plastic that did wash in was limited to less dense varieties, oddly.

And again, no seaweed. Which is the bellwether. If energy strikes the seafloor where there's sea colander & kelp growing, it churns it up. Along with the plastics stuck amongst it. The two go hand in hand. This week, the energy didn't hit the seaweed zone.

Why does seafloor energy hit different parts of the seafloor in different weeks? The answer seems to be one of the keys in predicting where & how debris will wash in. Oh well. Live and learn.

Collection Report Jan 30, 2012

Monday, January 30, 11:30AM. Bay View beach, Saco, ME. Low tide. Blue skies, mild wind from the west to east, maybe gusts to 20 mph.

Another week of weak tides and no fresh seaweed washed in. But there -was- a wrack line, mostly made up of land-based plant matter. And noticeable bits of plastic in the mix.

What happened to all the fresh sand dumped onshore the week before? It all slumped down to the terrace -- a slow-motion mudslide.

Quicksand a foot deep,
literally mush underfoot

Clearly, the beach "knew" that this batch of fresh sand didn't belong. It didn't fit or mesh into the rest of the beach. Instead, the beach sloughed it off, and each tide eroded more of it back out to sea. Sometimes leaving depressions or bowls where the scour was the strongest.

More interesting from a flotsam aspect is that, this week, stuff was actually left behind -- or exposed by the erosion. Zone N:

65 finds:

• Building materials: 5 (4 asphalt, 1 brick)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 27
• Fishing misc.: 7 (rope, clawband, shotgun shell wadding, 4 trap vinyl coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 4 (2 bottlecaps, two tear-off tops)
• Food-related metal/glass: 5 (can bottom, 4 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 5 (rubberband, silk flower, PVC pipe scrap, 2 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 7
• Paper/wood: 3
• Misc./unique: 2 (tiny scrap of yarn, sharp metal offcut)

Crumpled up on the sand was a nice cautionary tale.

A receipt from Fayetteville, NCNY!
(many thx for heads-up on that)  

Obviously this didn't wash in; it came out of a very local pocket. A good reminder not to jump to conclusions about where something came from without good evidence. (See recent reports of Japanese tsunami debris already reaching US west coast.)

Zone S:

23 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (asphalt, brick)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 12
• Fishing misc.: 2 (trap vinyl coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 4 (tiny scrap of can, 3 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 0
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 3 (leather offcuts)

By the time I left, the winds had picked up. The dry wrackline was quickly blowing down to the terrace.

To be washed away.

Where will it wash up next? And what will wash up with it?