Curtis Cove Report - Dec 15, 2012

Digging out from the Christmas deluge -- figuratively & literally -- to wish you all a Happy New Year! And to publish my last beach reports for 2012.

Saturday, December 15. 1:45PM, bright sun, mild offshore breeze, ~37 degrees. Shortly after high-tide, so I followed the waters down & down as I went back & forth.

Becalmed

The high-tide waters were incredibly calm. They lapped placidly with barely a ripple against the soaked sands. Small wonder why such fine muds and silts drop out of this water -- as well as so many tiny bits of plastic when the conditions were right. Curtis Cove is an amazing place.

Today was a day of velvet sand:

Tumbled & rounded beach stones on the high foreshore:

A totem from a vanished visitor:

And the coolest find, sand volcanoes:

A sandy beach isn't solid, of course. There's actually a lot of space between the sand grains. Water trickles through, organisms make homes, and air percolates -- lots of air. On this morning, the thinnest veil of ice had formed on the sand's surface. By noon, the rising tide with its ~two million gallons of water was squeezing the air trapped within the sand, trying to force it out. Usually this results in thousands of tiny little dots in the sand, "nail holes," where the air rushes out. But this day, the icy sheen resisted the onslaught. Finally the air pressure built up so much that it bulged the sand up in hundreds of pockmarks before finally exploding through and out the top.

Nature is amazing.

Though I spent an hour+ watching the tide slowly recede, I couldn't get down to the lower foreshore where so much plastic gets left behind on calm pleasant days like this. So my haul was light:

81 pcs of rope, about 90 ft total

28 pcs of nonrope debris

109 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 81 (most found amid the high wrack)
• Fishing misc.: 12 (4 bait bags, 3 trap bumpers, 3 trap vinyl coating scraps, 1 trap part, 1 trap tag)
• Food-related plastics: 3 (bottlecap, skewer, cup scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (aluminum can bottoms-modern)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 7 (3 packaging scraps, endpiece/coverplate, strap, plug/cap, brittle tube)
• Scrap plastics: 3 ( 2 > 1" , 1 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (small fabric scrap)

I'm not sure how much more I would have found at the low foreshore. With low-tides running before dawn and after dark this week there wasn't much hope finding out.

Still, this turned out to be very much the calm before the storm. Wait til you see the photos from December 24.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 11469
• Pcs fishing rope -- 2891
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4691

Curtis Cove Report - Aug 31, 2012

Friday, August 31. 7AM. Already a bright, bright day. Crisp cool air, but the promise of a hot afternoon, following a delicious week in the low 70s with no humidity.

New tracks in the fine sand high on the backshore brought a reminder of the changing season, the fast aging summer.

Sandpiper highway

Places like Curtis Cove are vital to thousands -- millions -- of annual migrators. As these sandpipers picked through their own finds on the beach, I wondered how well they could tell food from flotsam.

One of these is a slipper shell, the other a coffeecup lid

And I wondered how many birds, fish, and sea mammals would think this bright green confetti -- dragged and smeared down along the low foreshore -- a feast:

Found the lobster-trap vinyl scrap motherlode

And I wondered, how many places left in the world can truly be called protected?

On to the week's finds:

42 pcs of rope, about 35 ft total

402 pcs of non-rope debris

444 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 42
• Fishing trap gear: 216 (204 vinyl trap coatings, 7 bumpers, name tag, vent, 2 trap parts, buoy rod)
• Fishing misc.: 43 (39 clawbands, 4 fishing line)
• Food-related plastics: 25 (20 cup scraps, 2 food wrappers, cutlery handle, old straw scrap, cooking-temp stick)
• Food-related glass/metal: 7 (6 aluminum can bottoms, sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 33 (baseball cap visor insert, long stapled strap, shoulder strap, 2 cable ties, vinyl carrying bag neck, 3 anchors, 3 plant pot tag bits, 2 o-rings, 2 tubes, sticker, screw-top neck, carabiner, large garbage bag, 5 bag scraps, cigarette, gauze patch, rubberband, comb, shovel handle loop, teacup handle, 2 nonfood packaging scraps)
• Scrap plastics: 70 ( 26 > 1", 44 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 8 (2 fabric scraps, 6 cords)

A few strange things this week. First, lots of fishing rope after a lull. And after a similar drought, 6 aluminum can bottoms scoured up from the deep! I wonder what has changed in the currents or the sea floor to let them finally land again. Each week brings new questions.

The only other real oddities were this:

Baseball cap brim insert

and this:

Intact -- though gnarled -- comb

Somehow all of the fabric of that baseball cap got left behind, leaving only the plastic brim insert to beach at the cove. And it's rare to find a comb still intact -- even if this one shows some signs of banging around on rocks & debris.

Another week of beautiful sights, and way too much garbage.