Curtis Cove Report - Aug 22, 2012

Wednesday, August 22, 2012. 8:54 AM, just before low-tide. 69 degrees, calm air, bright sun, no humidity. And clean air. Late spring's decaying seaweed has given way to wholesome sea breezes and a fresh, salty scent. This was a gorgeous morning. Not least because of sights like this:

Can anyone help me identify what this flower is?

and this:

"Painted Lady" or "False Monarch", Vanessa cardui

and this:

Canada geese, swooping in

Two V-formations of these Canada geese soared in from the south. Apparently some non-migratory populations in the mid-Atlantic still fly up north to molt off their old feathers at the end of summer. Seems to be what these were doing. They splashed & foraged on the far side of the cove, their honking and rustling good company on a lonely shore.

So much life. So much of it depending on places like Curtis Cove as stopovers and havens.

Which is why stuff like this is so troubling:

Every week, more & more washes in. No matter how calm the weather. As I explored this week, I noticed that big clumps of freshly-dragged wrack lined the back "lip" of the foreshore. Bigger bits like this balloon scrap were left high and dry amid the tumbled mass. And the receding tide had dragged much sand & smaller plastics back down the slope, smearing it among the pebbles & cobbles.

The shore, yet again, was a hazard zone of brightly colored, poison-tinged, sharp-edged, deadly plastics.

Finds:

17 pcs of rope, about 15 ft total

282 pcs of non-rope debris

299 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 1 (plastic plank/slat offcut)
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 17
• Fishing trap gear: 167 (157 vinyl coating scraps, 4 bumpers, 4 genl trap parts, trap tag, bait bag)
• Fishing misc.: 19 (18 clawbands, fishing line)
• Food-related plastics: 21 (bottlecap outer seal, 16 cup scraps, food wrapper, JIF lid, silverware handle, old bread tag)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 24 (2 balloons, 8 bags/scraps, cigarette package, cigar tip, plastic glove, 2 bandaids, 6 cable ties, medicine blister pack, crate seal, bitten PUREX bottle bottom)
• Scrap plastics: 45 (18 >1", 27 <1 li="li">
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 4 (ceramic shard, 2 cloth scraps, cord)

More of the usual. (Though "only" 157 pieces of trap vinyl this week.) With two standouts:

Badly worn & bitten PUREX
bottle bottom

and:

Date: "08 10 06" -- Could this bread
wrapper be 6 years old??

Plastic is forever.

When I finished my collection, I wandered the usual rockpools at low tide. But then it occurred to me, most of the lower foreshore of Curtis Cove is a rockpool. Beneath its cobbled surface is a layer of poorly draining mud. When the tide goes out, it stays waterlogged & mucky. Turn over almost any cobble, and you'll find life. Like this:

Peek-a-boo

Which is why it's so shameful that under -- or next to -- so many cobbles at Curtis Cove you also find plastic. Like the blue vinyl lobster trap coating scrap in the picture above.

Change the game.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 8463
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1793
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 3992

Curtis Cove Report - Jul 23, 2012

Beginning a closer look at the continuing cleanups of Curtis Cove, Biddeford. Here's the first installment!

Saved from development last fall and placed into the hands of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Curtis Cove should be a pristine place, free from human intrusion. It isn't. On February 22 I got to a clean "base line" along a small 150-ft section of this polluted cove. As of last week, 5312 new pieces of manmade debris had washed in since then!

Following last week's catch-up post, here is Monday, July 23. Gray skies and heavy air. 8:30AM, low tide. A flat upper terrace of fine gray sand, sloping quickly off to a cobbly & green intertidal zone.

Before my collection, I took a stroll down to the tide pool that rings the north side of the cove. Always something interesting there. Today: a hermit crab war...

The little guy actually won this one

A new, bright-orange life form hanging out amid the rockweed...

A sea squirt, possibly the invasive Botrylloides violaceous 

And of course, this...

Far too many plastic flecks to count overall

Back up at my 150-ft beach zone, some of the week's debris was easy to see...

And some lay nestled amid the wrack:

All told, this is what my hour on the beach landed me yesterday:

68 pcs of rope, about 55 ft total

405 pcs of non-rope debris

473 pieces total:

• Bldg material/furniture: 1 (grommet)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 71 (68 mostly short, frayed rope strands, 3 small net fragments)
• Fishing trap gear: 298 (277 lobster trap vinyl scraps, 11 mangled steel trap parts, 5 trap bumpers, 3 bait bags, 1 trap tag, 1 trap vent)
• Fishing misc.: 25 (clawbands)
• Food-related plastics: 17 (1 bottlecap o-ring, 1 straw, 10 cup scraps, 3 food wrappers, 2 cutlery handles)
• Food-related glass/metal: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 19 (4 bag scraps, 1 balloon scrap, 2 cigarettes, 1 bandaid, 1 saw handle, 2 cable ties, 1 crate seal, 4 cord scraps, 1 air filter scrap, 1 duct tape, 1 big tire patch)
• Scrap plastics: 34 (13 >1", 21 <1")
• Paper/wood: 2 (paper scraps)
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 6 (5 fabric scraps, 1 glove)

Of the above, perhaps 2 pieces were local drops -- the cigarettes. Everything else most likely washed in. Now as maddening as these bits of vinyl from lobster traps are...

...at least you can see how they get into the ocean. But, a saw handle?

How does that happen? This has been the big wake-up at Curtis Cove -- the amount of things that by no rights should enter the ocean, but have. And will. And will keep washing up as long as they're made out of persistent, permanent plastic.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 5785
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1612
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 2396