Collection Report - February 4, 2014

I stopped by on January 28. But the sea was bone-frozen, a giant ice block, but a beautiful day. So I came back a week later. Tuesday, February 4, 2014. 10:15AM. 2 hrs after a very low low tide.

Weather still a struggle this winter. Cold and messy. This day the temp was only in the upper 20s and still very icy. But there had been good melting from the weekend, so at least I had a chance to get at something.

From what I could see of the beach, it was just old wrack there, nothing new had washed in. Lots of pebbles & cobbles were exposed down low. Good banding of wave lines and wrack, and decent sorting. And a beautiful rippling of wave lines as last high-tide went out.

Weekend's rainspots meet morning's tide line

There were chunks of wrack sticking out of the sand all along the backshore, meaning a lot of fine sand had come in and buried what was there. It had been a beach-building couple of weeks, rather than winter's usual beach-eroding.

There was also a ridiculous amount of rusted metal bits of lobster traps, never seen that much on the beach at once! Heavy, bulky chunks just all over the shore.

What kind of a day was it?

45 pcs of rope, about 40 ft total

111 pcs of nonrope debris

156 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 45
• Fishing misc.: 86 (16 vinyl trap coatings, 62 trap parts!, 3 bumpers, 4 bait bags, clawband)
• Food-related plastics: 5 (4 cup scraps, wrapper scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 6 (2 new locally dropped cans, 1 small can scrap, 3 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 1 (cable tie)
• Scrap plastics: 11 ( 9 > 1" , 2 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 2 (glove, fabric scrap)

62 rusted chunks of lobster trap washed up! Never happened before. A very weird week for that.

I wish I had been able to unlock the ice at the backshore to fully clear the beach, but for the weather I had, I'm pleased with what I was able to pull off & show.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 11646
• Total from fishing -- 10136 (87.0%)
• Pcs fishing rope -- 2059
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 7174

410

410. That's the number of little bits of vinyl coating from lobster traps I found on February 19. All picked from a thin unfrozen line at the back of the foreshore at Curtis Cove, Biddeford, Maine:

That makes 5237 pieces from the cove in the past year.

We consumers demand "cheap" food, "cheap" everything. In the 1970s, plastic-coated lobstering gear became readily available. Seeming cheap & effficient, Maine lobstermen had no choice. They had to start using it. Those who didn't, soon became ex-lobstermen, pushed out of a competitive business by downward pressures.

See more about the issue of plastic fishing gear in the Gulf of Maine at my Portland Press Herald blog "Undercurrents." A brand-new article on this topic posted today!

Curtis Cove Report - Sep 27, 2012

Thursday, September 27, 2012, 1:30PM. Hour and a half before low tide. My first autumn visit to the cove.

One final hurrah

This was a day of dragonflies, white butterflies, honeybees. Color. The last bits of life and warmth before the end. Even the rockpools teemed with vibrance & life!

Look closely, you'll see at least a dozen krill in this pic

The past week saw some seriously windy days inland. But the waves here at the beach hadn't crested very high. And a lot of blow-down spoke of winds howling offshore, not on. The same blow-down also revealed at least a couple once-buried goodies.

I see you, bait bag!

The sorting was better this week than last. But there were still jumbles of rock massed here and there -- including an impressive rock wall built up at the back of the southern foreshore.

Chock-a-block with new & old wrack

So, what did all that vibrancy & energy mean for debris? Well, this is one clue:

The wrong colors

It was going to be a bigger day than last week. Here's what I ended up with:

33 pcs of rope, about 30 ft total

93 pcs of nonrope debris

126 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 1
• Fishing rope/net: 33
• Fishing misc.: 45 (22 vinyl coating scraps, 3 bait bags, 2 bumpers, 4 trap parts, 3 trap tags, 2 fishing lines, 6 claw bands, shotgun shell, poly/rubber glove scrap, shotgun shell wadding)
• Food-related plastics: 11 (bottle scrap, 2 bottlecaps, 7 cup scraps, food wrapper scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (beer bottle)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 14 (mylar balloon, 2 trash bag scraps, 5 cords, duct tape, plug, lock cover (?), 2 cable ties, mouse rollerball)
• Scrap plastics: 19 ( 11 > 1" , 8 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 2 (metal clip, sock scrap)

2 1/2 times the amount of debris this week compared to the previous. And this week was also interesting both for how large many of the scraps were, and for how lightweight.

The soak tank

Curtis Cove is actually notable for how much debris comes in from the seafloor. So to have this much floatable this week? Something strange in the winds & waves, for sure.

Also this week, my most unexpected find yet:

Hello World!

Yes, an old-school rubber mouse ball. If you can imagine it, you can imagine it in the ocean.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9404
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1922
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4370