Collection Report March 23, 2011

March 23, Bay View beach, Saco, Maine. Another beautiful sunny morning.

9:45AM, 32 degrees F, an hr past a very low tide

The sea was remarkably low. As on the previous week, live sand-dollars poked out of the terrace by the hundreds. And it was a thrill leaving footsteps on a strip of low sand I'd never even seen before.

Higher up, one of the high tides in the past week had lapped at the edge of the dunes, pushing the cat-tails of March 9 up with them.

High and dry

It takes power to send waves that far up the beach. But again, where's the fresh seaweed & other floating debris? Records show at least a couple days of winds blowing from the east. (That is, off the ocean toward shore.) Yet, as so often this winter, almost nothing floated into Saco Bay, or beached itself at Bay View.

Here's Zone N (the northern of the two zones I visit each week):

32 finds:

• Building materials: 5 (asphalt chunk, 4 fence slats)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 9 (8 scraps, sponge)
• Fishing misc.: 2 (lobster claw band, partial lobster trap tag "CANADA LOB")
• Food-related plastics: 3 (#6 plastic cup scrap, popsicle wrapper, clingwrap)
• Food-related metal/glass: 4 (sea glass)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 7 (tampon applicator, bottled water lid seal, 5 scraps)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 2
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

A tampon applicator three weeks in a row. That's just not nice. Otherwise, the most interesting piece was this trap tag fragment:

A journey of 150+ miles. But how
many months or years?

One thing that raised my eyebrow was the styrofoam. This was the first time in weeks that any significant batch of foam showed up.

A bit of everything

On to Zone S (the southern of the two zones I visit, separated from Zone N by about 100 feet):

13 finds:

• Building materials: 4 (asphalt chunks)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 4 (coffee-cup base, 3 pieces styrofoam)
• Fishing misc.: 1 (rail from lobster trap tag)
• Food-related plastics: 1 (Poland Spring water bottle)
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (sea glass)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 1 (scrap)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 1 (ladies right size 4 "Liberty Brand" rubber shoe)

The bottle is grimy, but doesn't show sealife attached to it. The shoe is rotted and ruined, but can't tell whether it came from the sea or was buried in the sand for months/years. But look, more foam.

The orange chunks match the chunk
found in Zone N

Out of 45 pieces of litter, 13 were foam. Blowing the lid off that curve. So is that just a blip? Or does it mean something? I wish I knew.

Anyway, this week was a tiny haul. In two weeks at the end of December/beginning of January, I pulled up nearly 1,000 pieces of garbage, strewn among hundreds of blobs of seaweed. All of it, wreckage dragged into Saco Bay and heaved onto the sand by the Christmas storm. Since then, we've had nor'easters, we've had gales, storms, high seas, big weather. But there hasn't been another beaching -- of seaweed or plastic or both -- on anything like that scale since.

Wouldn't it be nice to believe that one big storm could rid a gulf of its man-made burden? I wish I believed that.

Collection Report March 9-10, 2011

March 9, 9:20AM. Sunny, not warm. But the bitterness of deep winter was breaking. The ice packs were quickly melting back, revealing the high backshore once again.

Impending spring

And, like in February, the beach was utterly scoured. Nothing washed in -- organic or otherwise. I wondered why. I also paused to enjoy the beautiful scene.

Tiger-eye maple?
No, just low tide artistry

Then, amid this clean-slate beach, I noticed:

9488 0402 ME 01 EEZ

An entire trap washes in, but almost no smaller flotsam? Why?

This one actually isn't too hard. You see, the surface of the ocean -- where plastic things float -- is NOT the whole ocean. On the surface, northerly or westerly winds can push the upper layer of water out to the open sea. (Surrounding seawater then rushes in to fill the void.) Meanwhile, on the sea floor, currents and tides can be dragging heavy objects like lobster traps the exact opposite direction. A few feet at a time, for years & years. Check out the Gulf of Maine Observing System's website. On some buoys, you can see real-time readings of current direction & speed from the surface all the way to 250 meters down! Sometimes they align; sometimes they're vastly different worlds.

Anyway, intrigued, I decided to carve some follow-up time the next day. Welcome back to Bay View, March 10, 9:00AM. Low tide, and winds had been from the east all night, strong & blustery. Was this a flotsam-maker?? Well...

Yes and no

Wow. That's new. A whole slew of cat-tail reeds washed in overnight. I've never seen any wash in before. There are no cat-tails at Bay View, or within sight of it. But two marshes do empty into Saco Bay from the north: Goosefare Brook a mile away; Scarborough Marsh about 4.5 miles. Dead reeds from one (or both) seem to have entered the bay and drifted south overnight. The easterly winds then blew them up onto the beach.

So. What would that mean for other flotsam? Still almost nothing! No kelp, seaweed, or plastic. Really intrigued, I made one more check at the afternoon high-tide. Welcome back, yet again, March 10, 3:00PM:

Energy

The wind remained strong from the east all day. The sea was a shaving-cream froth. I spent a half-hour mesmerized, just watching each wave splash in, the foam blowing away. Still no flotsam. The morning's reeds had been kicked up onto the backshore, and a big chunk of driftwood rolled in, but little else.

Seen better days

How little? Here's Zone N, after 3 visits in 2 days:

28 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (asphalt chunk)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1 (bit of styrofoam)
• Fishing misc.: 4 (2 rope scraps, claw band, lobster trap coating)
• Food-related plastics: 3 (corner tag, 2 bottlecap o-rings)
• Food-related metal/glass: 5 (Twisted Tea bottle, can scrap, 3 bits of sea glass)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 11 (inc. tub-surround scrap?, o-ring, Wal-Mart bag, half a pair of goggles, tampon applicator & its accompanying package, latex glove scrap?, upholstery scrap)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 2 (tissue, stick from small firework)
• Misc./unique: 0

A remarkably low count. Some, like the bottle, clearly a recent local drop.

And what about Zone S?

16 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (asphalt, fence slat)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 1 (styrofoam bit)
• Fishing misc.: 4 (2 rope scraps, shotgun shell, clawband)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (can scrap)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 7 (including bandaid, thin pipette, wristband)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

Again, next to nothing. See the claw band wrapped around the bit of driftwood? I find them a lot like that. Usually remove the wood, but wanted to show it this time. Mostly because it's about the only thing of interest that washed up this week.

So. Roiled seas, a lot of beachcombing, easterly winds. And almost no flotsam. It's not like Saco Bay has been magically freed from all its debris. Reeds -- and a large, rotten log -- floated in from somewhere to the north. But not kelp, or seaweed, or plastic debris. A week before, 212 bits of junk washed in. This week, a fifth of that, even with a day of helpful winds.

With Weather Underground & NERACOOS's excellent archives, I might be able to make some sense of it. Til then, nothing to do but enjoy the mystery & wonder of the sea. And however many strolls along a clean beach I can get.