Blinded by Science

Two and a half years ago, I sorted my first bag of beach debris -- categorized, photographed, tried to make sense of what I was finding. I then came up with questions to ask, and tried to come up with ways to test those questions.

In short: I tried to bring science to the problem.

But the trouble with science is, there's always more, deeper, better science that can be done. Questions can be revisited, looked at from different angles. Newer, more precise tests can be devised and performed. Even the best, most-tested scientific theories today are only approximations of reality. Newton's laws of gravity work on Earth but completely fail to predict where Mercury should be. Einstein's gravitational theories get Mercury right, but don't play well (or at all) with quantum mechanics. Meanwhile, quantum mechanics doesn't work in black holes, or the Big Bang.

Every question "answered" just brings still more questions.

It is an endless loop.

And the plastics industry knows this. They refuse to put any real skin in the plastics pollution game, claiming that there needs to be "more science" done on the problem first. "More science" can always be done on a problem; at some point a responsible society has to act against a problem before all the "science" is in.

This happened in 1969:

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, on fire
Source: http://www.oftimeandtheriver.org/resources/
modern/images/BurningCuyahoga.jpg

This happened in 1972, just three years later:

The Clean Water Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_Water_Act

In the US, when there was public & political will, it took only three years to go from a river on fire to the Clean Water Act. Three years.

Ironically, 1972 was also the year that plastics were first extensively studied in fish populations (link opens as PDF file). Yet 40 years later, where is the Plastic Pollution Act? It keeps getting pushed back and off the plate, as there's a need for "more science." Across the US, this very day, industry lobbyists have stymied plastic bag bans/fees. They insist that cities pay for costly scientific "lifecycle analyses," or they try to ban towns from choosing less pollution on fuzzy -- or junk -- science.

Sometimes you don't need a lifecycle analysis. You just need to look up into the trees:

Source: http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/files/2011/
12/plastic-bag-caught-in-tree-branches-275x183.jpg

or gutters:

Source:  http://mikesbogotablog.blogspot.com/
2011/05/bogotas-plastic-bag-problem.html 

or inside the bellies of sea creatures:

100 plastic bags pulled from stomach of dead sperm whale
Source:  http://oceanwildthings.com/2012/06/
sperm-whale-death-by-100-plastic-bags/ 

Sometimes you just have to say, "This is wrong, it doesn't have to be this way, it should stop."

I enjoy the scientific approach to my beach collections. I like being able to look at the problem, learn to ask questions, make hypotheses, test those hypotheses, ask better questions.

But for me, the biggest questions were answered long ago: What is the biggest source of physical pollution in the ocean? Consumer plastic. What is the way to clean the ocean? Use much, much less plastic.

No more amount of science is going to change that. It's time to stop letting industry play the "needs more science" card. It's time to change the game.

The Difference a Few Feet Makes

A couple weeks ago, I finished my main review of my first full year at Bay View. It was eye-opening.

Now, I've taken the time to compare the two zones I work. This has been even more eye-opening.

As a quick refresher, every week I walk two distinct zones at Bay View, I call them "Zone N"(orth) and "Zone S"(outh).

My two zones at Bay View

Each zone is 250 feet long, each starts at the dune line and goes down to the terrace, halfway between low & high tide lines. The big difference? Zone N is right near the parking lot & beach access. It's the popular spot, where all the beachgoers congregate. Zone S, on the other hand, sits beyond a private patio area that encroaches onto the beach. The patio acts like a line of demarcation. A few folks wander down past it to spend time in Zone S, but not many.

In Maine, beach season is pretty much only the summer, maybe a little in the spring. In autumn and especially winter, only the hardiest of solace-seekers hits a Maine beach. So my question when I started was, will there be a noticeable difference in debris between the zones, and will it even out over the winter when the beachgoers have gone?

Well, here's my charts for the four seasons:

Summer 2010

Autumn 2010

Winter 2010-11

Spring 2011

In the summer, the tourist season, Zone N blew Zone S away. This isn't surprising. And in fact, much of the difference between the two could easily be accounted for by beachgoer trash -- cigarettes, food packets, umbrella bits, toys, flipflops.

But look at autumn, winter, and spring. All of them still show a big difference between Zones N & S. In fact, 2 to 2 1/2 times more in Zone N for each season. What does this mean?

Breakdown of finds by zone & category

Well, maybe debris got buried in the summer, and re-exposed by winter storms? A dirtier Zone N in summer may mean more junk uncovered there in winter. But much of what showed up in winter had obviously washed in from far away. Tons of fishing debris, sun-bleached plastic, plastic fouled by marine life. And of course, no cigarette butts. If they'd been buried in summer, they surely would have shown up in winter.

No, what's happening here is weird. Two zones, same beach, same climate & weather, separated by barely 150 feet (if that). And yet during the winter, Zone N consistently doubles the amount of debris washed up.

Why?

There's a rock outcrop just north of Zone N that's exposed at low tide. Maybe it changes the current? The beach at Zone S seems slightly narrower, slightly steeper. Not drastically, but maybe enough? What about the trees? You can see from the satellite image that Zone N backs onto open ground, while Zone S is tree-studded. Does that blunt the seabreeze and change the flotsam?

Whatever the reason, I know this: If you think you know how your beach works, take the briefest of strolls up or down it. And then check again.

I love this stuff.