Curtis Cove Report - Dec 24, 2012

Monday, December 24, 1PM. Bright sun, mid-30s, strong land breeze, about an hour before low tide.

Yikes

A very different world from December 15. The past week had seen a lot of rain, and one day was kind of blustery. But still didn't expect this mass of wrack. The whole foreshore was a brown goopy mess. In places 2 1/2 ft thick!

Feels like squishy quicksand underfoot

Lower on the foreshore, all of the once-exposed pebbles & cobbles lay buried under thick, soft, yellow-ish sand/mud.

Buried

It takes a lot of energy to turn a beach from cobbles/pebbles to smooth soft sand overnight.

All of this washed-in seaweed means one thing to a Flotsam Diarist:

debris...

debris...

and more debris

Everywhere I turned and stepped. So much debris that there was no real hope of collecting it all. In the end, I had to treat the seaweed as I do sand -- collect the debris lying on top and visible, don't bother digging. Most every kick would have brought more for my garbage bags.

In the end, after much mucking through the goop, this was my haul:

190 pcs of rope, about 350 ft total

177 pcs of nonrope debris

367 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 190 (~350 ft)
• Fishing misc.: 60 (3 bait cleats, 15 vents, 3 parts, 6 bait bags, 4 bumpers, 2 vinyl scraps, 15 trap tags (2 from the 90s), 2 shotgun shells, 3 shell wadding, 6 clawbands, buoy scrap)
• Food-related plastics: 36 (5 bottles - old, 1 bottle base, 3 cutlery, 5 bottlecaps, 3 cap o-rings, 1 cap seal, 3 cup tops, 10 cup scraps, 4 food wrappers, fruit cup - uneaten)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (2 can scraps)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 42 (7 bag scraps, 2 mylar balloons, 3 latex balloons, 4 string, 4 nonfood bottlecaps, golf ball, cigarette tip, lid, tupperware container, diaper, lip balm, toy house mold, Javex bottle bottom scrap, 4 sewage disks, record scrap, 4 caps/plugs, tent peg, 2 vinyl upholstery scraps, hospital ID tag, large crate scrap)
• Scrap plastics: 29 ( 15 > 1" , 14 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 8 (7 fabric scraps, glove)

This was a true cornucopia of debris. Everything from Canadian bleach bottle scraps to part of an old vinyl record. You can find close-ups of some of the stranger debris at my new "Undercurrents" blog for the Portland Press Herald.

A couple that I didn't post there:

Et pourquoi pas?

Two 3/4" caps to some kind of bottle -- probably from Canada given the French/English -- washed up. One was just the cap, the other appears as though the whole top of the bottle was sliced off. Anyone ever see these?

Sproingy

Canada, so wild that even its lobster claw bands roam 150 miles from home!

Anyway, thus ended my Flotsam Diaries collections for 2012. Most definitely with a bang, not a whimper. Happy New Year!

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 11836
• Pcs fishing rope -- 3081
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4693

Curtis Cove Report - Sep 20, 2012

Thursday, September 20, 2012. 8:45AM. Greetings, from a lingering Maine summer.

Sun-kissed beach roses and other wildflowers greeted me this morning. Low tide, deserted shores, and clean bright skies:

A beautiful morning.

Over the previous few days big storms and huge winds had come through. The sand "cliffs" high on the foreshore were knocked and dragged back over. Fresh wrack ripped from the cove's basin lay scattered and smeared up and down the beach.

Messy, messy!

Yet it was a surprisingly light day for debris. The lightest so far this year. The energy that brought new wrack onto the beach also spent much time dragging that wrack (and its plastics) back down the foreshore.

Outflow

The high tides weren't high enough to dump any debris on the flat backshore. Instead, it came to rest on the sloping foreshore, where most was pulled out to sea again by the offshore winds and receding tide.

The finds:

13 pcs of rope, about 15 ft total

37 pcs of non-rope debris

50 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 13
• Fishing misc.: 14 (bait bag, fishing line, trap tag, 8 vinyl trap coating scraps, 2 trap parts, claw band)
• Food-related plastics: 12 (8 cup/top scraps, bottlecap o-ring, cutlery handle, 2 straw scraps)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (aluminum can base, sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 3 (baggie, strapping, tape)
• Scrap plastics: 3 ( all < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 3 (2 scraps, cord)

All the usual culprits. Just less of them this week. Which left me more time to look at the beautiful.

Sandpiper tracks

Shaggy beach cobbles

What's more beautiful than life? Tenacious, wonderful life.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9278
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1889
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4348

Curtis Cove Report - Sep 6, 2012

Thursday, September 6. 9:40AM. Low tide. Bird-watchers and artists ringed the parking lot, admiring at the mists coming in from the sea, the strong low sun peeking through. It was the kind of morning where you just want to walk the beach.

Fortunately, that's why I was there!

And it was an interesting beach to walk! Even though recent tides hadn't been that high, they had done a number to the foreshore. For starters, by removing much of it.

Sand cliff with "erratic" still precariously lodged

One high tide had slammed the upper lip of the foreshore, scooping away more than a foot of fine sand. Receding, it left tumbled pebbles and once-buried debris sticking out of the cliff face. That or another high tide then ripped July's green algae from the cobbles and smeared it all up and down the long slope of the low foreshore.

A feast of life amid wrack = fat, lazy gulls

With the wrack spread out over such a large area, it was going to be hard to collect everything. Though a few things were pretty hard to miss.

Mylar balloon scrap

Bait bag

Gnarled mass of fishing rope

Coffee cup lid

So, the finds:

23 pcs of rope, about 42 ft total

194 pcs of non-rope debris

217 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 2 (wooden stake, plastic tent stake)
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 23
• Fishing trap gear: 113 (96 vinyl coating scraps, 11 trap parts, aperture ring, 3 bumpers, 2 bait bags)
• Fishing misc.: 12 (claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 14 (11 cup scraps, 2 food wrappers, bread tag)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (can bottom)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 20 (5 mylar balloon scraps, PE "Made in USA" balloon, balloon string, 2 bag scraps, cigarette lighter scrap, toy shovel handle, 3 nonfood packaging, 4 cable ties, tube, old hook/coathook)
• Scrap plastics: 31 ( 11 > 1", 20 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (gear shift plate)

217 pieces of manmade garbage off a small section of an unvisited, deserted beach  counts as a light day.

Ours is a strange world.

Collection Report Feb 6-7, 2012

Monday, Feb. 6, 3:30PM. Low-tide. Brilliant late sun with its long shadows:

A whole lot of bright blue sky, and a whole lot of nothing else. The only thing to see was a dry "wrack" line of landborne reeds. The final gasp of the large sand-dump from two weeks before lay as a very faint sandbar just seaward from the foreshore. Otherwise, the beach was back to normal. No rocky strewn-field, no starfish, no tube-worm casings by the thousands. Just soft sand spread along from dune to terrace.

A lovely day for a walk, but dismal for collecting flotsam.

On a hunch, I stopped by again Tuesday. The difference a day makes. Noon, an hour past high-tide. Mostly cloudy, 40s again, slight onshore breeze, and another weak, low high-tide line. But... fresh seaborne wrack!

Overnight the Bay dumped a batch of fresh, seafloor "sea colander."

See? It sinks

All winter long there has been nothing floating into Bay View. Everything that gets kicked up is from different parts of the seafloor. In that regard, this week was the same as the past two months. But at least this week some combination of magic churned up the seabed and dragged in a few things of interest from the watery grave. First, Zone N:

78 finds:

• Building materials: 9 (7 brick, 2 asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 25
• Fishing misc.: 9 (5 rope scraps, 2 clawbands, lure bag scrap, shotgun shell wadding)
• Food-related plastics: 6 (2 bottlecap o-rings, 2 Solo cup scraps, food wrapper, fork)
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (can scrap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 17 (plastic glove, swiffer scrap, 2 toy scraps, battery/cartridge cover, silk flower, toggle weight ?, 5 scraps >1", 5 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 10 (9 cigarettes, 1 packaging)
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 1 (fabric swatch)

A lot of foam, but none of it showed signs of sea voyage. Probably bits and pieces blown in from up and down the shore, out of garbage cans or freed from dunes. The other, non-foam plastics showed signs of being ocean-borne. And like I said, they were all dense, sunken plastics tossed up from the seabottom.

Zone S:

30 finds:

• Building materials: 9 (6 asphalt, wood offcut, tile, concrete)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 6
• Fishing misc.: 2 (rope scrap, bait bag)
• Food-related plastics: 4 (bottlecap o-ring, 3 food wrapper scraps)
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (can)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 5 (balloon w/ string, 2 large vinyl upholstery scraps, 2 scraps >1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 1
• Misc./unique: 2 (cloth strip, leather offcut)

Those upholstery scraps were some of the most brutalized, tortured pieces of vinyl I've ever seen. Whatever their story, I'm sure it's a doozy.

Still, flotsam-wise there really is no comparison between Winter '11 and Winter '12. The same can be said weather-wise. Are the two related? Does warmer air shut down the systems that normally drag thousands of bits of plastic into the bay? Does less snow/rain = less river runoff = changed circulation patterns? I don't know. But it's worth looking into.

Collection Report Jan 30, 2012

Monday, January 30, 11:30AM. Bay View beach, Saco, ME. Low tide. Blue skies, mild wind from the west to east, maybe gusts to 20 mph.

Another week of weak tides and no fresh seaweed washed in. But there -was- a wrack line, mostly made up of land-based plant matter. And noticeable bits of plastic in the mix.

What happened to all the fresh sand dumped onshore the week before? It all slumped down to the terrace -- a slow-motion mudslide.

Quicksand a foot deep,
literally mush underfoot

Clearly, the beach "knew" that this batch of fresh sand didn't belong. It didn't fit or mesh into the rest of the beach. Instead, the beach sloughed it off, and each tide eroded more of it back out to sea. Sometimes leaving depressions or bowls where the scour was the strongest.

More interesting from a flotsam aspect is that, this week, stuff was actually left behind -- or exposed by the erosion. Zone N:

65 finds:

• Building materials: 5 (4 asphalt, 1 brick)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 27
• Fishing misc.: 7 (rope, clawband, shotgun shell wadding, 4 trap vinyl coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 4 (2 bottlecaps, two tear-off tops)
• Food-related metal/glass: 5 (can bottom, 4 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 5 (rubberband, silk flower, PVC pipe scrap, 2 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 7
• Paper/wood: 3
• Misc./unique: 2 (tiny scrap of yarn, sharp metal offcut)

Crumpled up on the sand was a nice cautionary tale.

A receipt from Fayetteville, NCNY!
(many thx for heads-up on that)  

Obviously this didn't wash in; it came out of a very local pocket. A good reminder not to jump to conclusions about where something came from without good evidence. (See recent reports of Japanese tsunami debris already reaching US west coast.)

Zone S:

23 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (asphalt, brick)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 12
• Fishing misc.: 2 (trap vinyl coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 4 (tiny scrap of can, 3 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 0
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 3 (leather offcuts)

By the time I left, the winds had picked up. The dry wrackline was quickly blowing down to the terrace.

To be washed away.

Where will it wash up next? And what will wash up with it?

Collection Report Jan 16-17, 2011

January 16, 2012. 11:35AM, Bay View beach, Saco, Maine, just after high-tide. Winter finally arrived, about two months late for this part of the world. And the previous week had seen some good stormy weather to boot. At about 20 degrees F, "layering" was the word of the day.

On the foreshore, the snow was gone, but a sheet of ice held fresh wrackline -- with its tag-alongs -- in its grip.

This marks the first of a remarkable few weeks at the beach. Not necessarily for the flotsam washed up, but for how shorelines work in winter. Take a look at this pebbly wasteland at the edge of the low-tide terrace.

It turns out, this isn't the usual rocky substrate, revealed by a week of erosion. It's the opposite. Under these pebbles the old sand was one big block of ice, locked firmly in place by winter's descent. All of this rocky debris was hurled violently on top of the old sand layer. By the kind of churning sea that was able to cast offshore oddities like this high up the slope.

Tossed it back in, maybe still alive

Thousands of tube-worm casts
amid the rock & shell

The sea made a bed of offshore flotsam and left it high & dry once the tide receded. I even found a pebble that was completely encrusted with barnacles. These rocks aren't local substrate; they're seafloor rocks (and even one oyster shell -- my first at Bayview) from out beyond the tide line that the previous week's weather hurled up.

Proof that when you freeze a shoreline, and then throw in a nice churning storm in the mix, you've very much changed the game. Look also at how the ocean left the signature of her wave energy in the pebbles.

What an amazing world.

Anyway, for this day, the ice along the wrack sealed much of the plastic. I got what I could, then returned at low tide on the 17th to collect what had thawed.

So, for Zone N:

66 finds:

• Building materials: 16 (10 brick, 2 asphalt, 4 tile)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 3
• Fishing misc.: 14 (11 lobster trap vinyl coating scraps, 1 trap scrap, 2 bumpers)
• Food-related plastics: 1 (bottle cap o-ring)
• Food-related metal/glass: 24 (bottlecap, 23 seaglass!)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 5 (2 scraps >1", 3 scraps <1")
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 3 (napkin scraps)
• Misc./unique: 0

Almost everything that came up -- and stayed up -- was heavy or dense or friction-y. Tile, brick, sharp snaggy shards of lobster trap vinyl. Light, blowy plastics were limited to 3 tiny flecks of foam that got tangled into the wrack. And look at this, 23 sea glass, that's a record.

Just a wild week that brought up stuff from very unusual places on the seabed.

Here's Zone S:

45 finds:

• Building materials: 9 (7 brick, 1 asphalt, 1 tile)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 4
• Fishing misc.: 7 (4 trap vinyl coatings, 1 bumper, 2 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (bottlecap o-rings)
• Food-related metal/glass: 11 (1 can scrap, 1 pulltab, 2 bottlecaps, 7 seaglass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 6 (3 scraps <1", tieback, rubberband, carabiner?)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 5 (leather sole, leather punchout, 2 rag scraps, buried fencing)

The same story here as Zone N. Heavy stuff, weird stuff. Seafloor stuff. Including this bizarre frozen arachnid...

...which turned out to be mangled chainlink fencing.

So a week not notable for how much washed in, but for what it was and where it came from. The sudden onset of winter froze the beach in place. And that seems to have set in motion many weeks of odd behavior -- which I've been able to catalog.

Stay tuned!