7:30AM, and another bright, sunny morning in Maine:
Plus, another fabled 4th of July weekend come and gone. What would the aftermath bring?
This day was a treat: I had with me the
Portland Press Herald! Reporter Colleen Stewart and photographer Carl Walsh walked & talked with me for an hour and a half about what I do. They got to see some of the trash on the beach, as well as a big collection of the more "interesting" bits from my past year.
It was a good day to show them around, because most every step held evidence of what our modern world now leaves behind. Here's
Zone N:
229 finds:
- Building materials: 3 (2 asphalt, 1 brick)
- Foam/Styrofoam: 27
- Fishing misc.: 18 (6 rope, 4 twine, 2 trap tags, 1 shotgun shell wadding, 5 claw bands)
- Food-related plastics: 32 (bottle, 7 bottle caps, 12 food wrappers, 6 straw wrappers, spoon, 3 straws, gum, "Royal Gala Organic" apple sticker)
- Food-related metal/glass: 10 (can, 2 bottle caps, 3 glass scraps, 4 foil wrappers)
- Nonfood/unknown plastics: 34 (7 bag bits, lip balm, aspirin blister pack, 6 firecrackers, 4 beach furniture scraps, glowstick, strapping, sunglasses earpiece, 5 scraps >1", 7 scraps <1")
- Cigarette filters/plastics: 55 (53 filters, 2 bits of packaging)
- Paper/wood: 47 (8 napkins, 23 misc scraps, 16 firework sticks)
- Misc./unique: 3 (scrap of fabric, two flip-flops)
A big day. Nothing terribly unusual -- in fact, an impressively "normal" spread of what the beach on the 4th of July looks like in a small New England community. The only striking thing maybe being:
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A bruised, sunburned Canadian lobster
trap tag, at the end of a many-year trek |
Talking with Colleen & Carl was fantastic, and went on longer than I'd expected. I had to come back a couple days later to hit
Zone S. I brought my daughter with me, and she played happily as she always does at the beach.
 |
| Beachcomber-in-Training |
And here's what I (and Ruby -- she brought one of the asphalt chunks over with a huge grin) found:
61 finds:
- Building materials: 6 (4 asphalt chunks, 2 fence slats)
- Foam/Styrofoam: 13
- Fishing misc.: 7 (2 rope, 2 twine, 2 claw bands, buoy scrap)
- Food-related plastics: 5 (bottle, snack package, bottle cap, straw, wrapper)
- Food-related metal/glass: 1 (seaglass)
- Nonfood/unknown plastics: 11 (bag scrap, big melted glob, firecracker, 5 scraps >1", 3 scraps <1")
- Cigarette filters/plastics: 11
- Paper/wood: 6
- Misc./unique: 1 (fabric scrap)
A small haul, and again, little out of the ordinary. Easily the coolest & most bizarre find was the barnacle-encrusted plastic chunk:
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| What stories would this thing tell? |
Another week down, 290 more pieces of debris added to the collection. Nothing game-changing, but a solid week full of bits & bobs washed up, blown in, and left behind.
Oh, and the Press Herald? They put The Flotsam Diaries
on the front page July 11! I love what I do.
