Collection Report Nov 28, 2011

Monday, November 28. 10:00AM. Bay View beach, Saco, Maine. Temp in the 50s. Overcast with occasional sun. Like, well, this:

A weird day. The kind of day where the sea has left behind rock gardens:

The purses of mermaids:

The homes of tubeworms:

As well as two horses and a rider with a fuzzy hat??

Then, of course, the usual:

So, what came out of the sand, all told? Zone N:

134 finds:

• Building materials: 4 (asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 62 (!!)
• Fishing misc.: 5 (2 shotgun shells, claw band, 2 bits of fishing line)
• Food-related plastics: 8 (3 bottle-cap o-rings, 3 food wrappers/scraps, 2 gum)
• Food-related metal/glass: 5 (bottle cap, 2 foil wrappers, 2 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 17 (o-ring, plastic hairband, plastic glove, bandaid, 2 wall anchors, kids shirt tag, rubberband, 2 scraps >1", 7 scraps < 1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 32
• Paper/wood: 1 (wood firecracker stick)
• Misc./unique: 0

This was the week for foam! See the riot of deadly color:

What I discovered this week is that the little protected corner near the access point is a real collection spot. There's an old log there, and the windward side amasses all kinds of seaweed, reeds, leaves, and plastic -- mostly light stuff like cigarette butts &, well, styrofoam. And now on to Zone S:

22 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 3
• Fishing misc.: 3 (1 rope scrap - natural fiber, 2 vinyl coating)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (bottle, pepper packet)
• Food-related metal/glass: 2 (sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 9 (baggie, strapping, folding step!, 6 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 2
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

This, obviously, is the most interesting find:

Not least because I had no idea what it was, until a quick FaceBook "crowdsourcing." Flotsam Diaries fan Irene Parsons knew right away: the top of a folding step-stool! How it got to Bay View, with oceanic algae attached, I'll never really know.

My big takeaway for the week: If you don't know, ask. There's probably someone who does!

Collection Report Nov 7, 2011

Nov 7, 1:30PM, an hour or so before low tide. Bright, low sun. Long, moody shadows. A beautiful day for a walk on the beach.

And all of 30 seconds into the day, I could tell some weirdness was afoot.

I've seen the ocean pull together these interesting mounds of rock & cobble down in the southern part of my walk before. But never up on the northern end. It's always a thrill, witnessing nature cull & arrange perfect piles of stone. Only to blow them all apart with the next tide.

Along with the stone was a colorful array of bone, shell, deep/coldwater coral shards...

And plastic cats?

This was an amazing day. Not just for how much debris washed up, but for where it washed up. Here's Zone N:

46 finds:

• Building materials: 19 (9 asphalt chunks, 6 brick, 4 tile)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 4 (trap vinyl coating scraps)
• Food-related plastic: 2 (wrappers)
• Food-related metal/glass: 8 (2 can scraps, 6 sea glass)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 8 (3 plastic hairbands, button, toy cat, vinyl scrap, 2 strapping)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 2 (paper scrap, wood firecracker stick)
• Misc./unique: 2 (glass bead, leather scrap)

This is not the amazing bit. For that, we quickly turn to Zone S:

189 finds:

• Building materials: 14 (4 asphalt, 3 brick, 3 shingles, 3 wood stakes, plywood chip)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1
• Fishing misc.: 72 (4 rope scraps, 30 vinyl trap scraps, 34 claw bands!, shotgun shell, 3 trap bumpers)
• Food-related plastic: 13 (2 bottlecap liners, cup top, cup scrap, 3 gum, 3 silverware, 3 wrappers)
• Food-related metal/glass: 11 (4 bottle caps, foil, 6 seaglass)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 59 (balloon, 3 hairbands, bandaid, 5 plastic wrap, 4 tape scraps, 4 strapping, 7 vinyl shards, bow, firecracker, clothes tag, 14 scraps >1", 17 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 9 (8 filters, 1 filter tip)
• Paper/wood: 1 (paper air filter)
• Misc./unique: 9 (crayon tip, aluminum scrap, 5 fabric pieces, 2 gloves)

Wow. Never has Zone S quadrupled Zone N. Not in 17 months. With a dizzying array of finds, mostly all tossed back from the sea, wrecked & ruined. From:

Ancient & grotty lobster claw bands

To:

Fish-nibbled balloon

To:

Truth in advertising

And the oddest thing about all of this junk (from both zones)? Look:

Minus a couple local food wrappers, it all sinks. Every piece that washed up this week is denser than seawater. It all once littered the seafloor. From there, currents & tides dragged it along rock, over silt, through weed. Until finally hurling the bits up onshore, along with shell & bone & stone. Crazy. Especially since Weather Underground's historical data for the week shows offshore breezes, the tide chart shows weak tides, and the local NOAA buoy also shows winds & surface currents moving offshore. What's happening on the ocean bottom often bears no relationship to what's happening just a few meters above.

One for the books, that's for sure. (And maybe a little background for why Nov. 21's walk put me in a more thankful frame of mind.) My takeaway? Whether the discarded plastics of our modern world float, or sink, they still pollute. And very rarely do any of them ever go "away."

Collection Report Dec 16, 2010

Good morning from Bay View beach, Saco, Maine. A crisp 23 degrees at 11:30AM.

So many footprints

I think I might be getting the hang of this. Recent storms leave little flotsam visible, while gentle waves seem to bring it in abundance. This was a gentler week (minus one big storm), so my hunch was I'd find a good haul. And I was right.

Waves gathered together a
pile of wood chips...

...and more

At Bay View, "stuff" tends to stick together. Somehow, all these various bits & bobs manage to find each other, and make something larger than themselves. It happened the week before too...

Dec. 8, more of nature's handiwork

...only to be blown apart by a fierce storm on Dec. 12:

Dec. 13, same spot

I'm watching a Teaching Company series now on the physics of history; there's great tidbits on how stars & planets coalesced from dust. And, in a way, I'm watching the same things happen right in front of my eyes - on a smaller scale.

I also love that different flotsam tends to come to shore in different weeks. Curt Ebbesmeyer wrote about this in Flotsametrics. He tells how the slightest shifts in wind or warmth or density can utterly rewrite the map of surface currents, gyres, eddies, etc. At Bay View, December 16 was the day of the aluminum can.

Delicious irony

All told, I pulled up 20 scraps of soda/beer can - which blows the roof off the 6-month curve. And proves that you just never know. Also, this day greeted me with 3 shoe soles, when usually I find zero. Plus two new lobster traps, probably brought near the shore by the storms and then carried to the sand by the calmer waves.

Tag # 9488 A1 0206 ME 06 Z:G
Ruined

Tag # 6814 A1 0225 ME 08 EEZ Z:G
Intact, still w/40 feet of buoy rope

So a very interesting day. On to the counts. Zone N:

74 finds:

• Building materials: 4 (asphalt, plaster from bucket, wooden floorboard scrap, slat)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 15 (trap bumper, trap scrap, 5 scraps of trap coating, claw band, rope, trap name tag (B. Emmerson 461), shotgun shell, sinker, 3 shell waddings)
• Food-related plastics: 5 (ketchup pack, bottle cap, cap seal, bit of straw, torn-off packet corner)
• Food-related metal/glass: 18 (10 can tops/bottoms, 5 can scraps, 3 bottle caps)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 24 (2 bags, scrap of siding, lg o-ring, small o-ring, bandaid, 7 scraps, 1 hard escutcheon scrap, bottle cap pull, rubbery buoy (?) top, 2 vinyl scraps, lacework, clear circle, black molded sphere top, clothes pin, electronics battery cover, piece of tube)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 2 (bar code, swiffer)
• Misc./unique: 5 (shovel handle, glove, circuit board, leather shoe sole, bit of steel)

On to Zone S:

62 finds:

• Building materials: 16 (5 slats, 2 metal plates, very worn composite lumber stair step, wiring sheath, 2 chunks asphalt, 5 asphalt roof tile bits)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 10 (2 whole traps, rope, trap bumper, claw band scrap, 5 bits of trap coating)
• Food-related plastics: 3 (collander, straw, gum wrapper)
• Food-related metal/glass: 7 (2 sea glass, can, 4 can scraps)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 21 (bag, bag scrap, 7 various colored scraps, bit of blue upholstery vinyl, 2 bits of tube, tie strap, 2 rubberbands, o-ring, hairband, conditioner bottle, cap/plug, SKU tag, weatherstrip)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 1 (small wood block)
• Misc./unique: 3 (2 shoe soles, 1 rubber floormat scrap)

So. 136 more pieces of garbage to add to the tally. Almost all of it from the sea. In one week. And there's no sign of it slowing down.

On a final note: Dear San Francisco Soap Company, #3 plastic is PVC, which releases serious toxins both in production and incineration. With all the other materials available, how about package your personal care products in something else?

We can do better

Snapshots of a Moving Target

A wise old Greek once said, "The only constant is change." He also said, "You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are ever flowing on."

He may as well have been describing the beach at Bay View.

Each week I step onto the sand, the scene evolves. Wind, waves, paws, feet, fingers, trowels. The timeless mechanics of moon and tide. The crumbling sand towers of a child's imagination. A "bonfire log" that makes its way up and down the beach from week to week.

Or a wrecked lobster trap that washes ashore with all its annual tags still intact...

(as seen on June 8, 2010 - no idea when it actually arrived)

...to a week later, when all the tags had been torn off and lay amid the wreckage...

(June 15, 2010)

...to a week later, when it was moved alongside a heavily wrecked friend...

(June 22, 2010)


...to a week later, when it was again by itself and all the tags had been stripped away except the owner's nameplate (found the tags dozens of yards away in the sand)...

(June 29, 2010)

...to, finally, a week later, when it was gone and forgotten:

(July 6, 2010)

All of which is to say that the beach is a dynamic place. A guy and a trash bag can't hope to understand everything that's happening, because it's happening all the time, day and night. It moves on, regardless of the schedule of a Flotsam Diarist.

And that's OK. Sometimes the best stories are the ones that don't answer all the questions, but instead leave you free to think up new ones to ask.

As a side note, I've started a page of all lobster trap tags I've uncovered in my wanderings. So far I've found tags identifying 14 unique traps lost to the sea and eventually washed up on shore. Here's the thing, each year the State of Maine issues licenses for some 3 million lobster traps. By some estimates, tens of thousands -- perhaps more than 100,000 -- are lost each year in Maine waters. (Like most "marine debris" issues, there's more guessing than facts. But the folks at the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation have started gathering the data, and are finding hundreds of old pots at a time.)

If the actual number of derelict lobster traps is only 1/100th of the worst case, that's still 10,000 traps lost over a decade. As the grills rust, and the plastic coatings tear and break loose, how many more of this...

or this...

...can you expect to find on your day at the beach?