Dues

In the life of the earth, 2 1/2 years is nothing. In the life of a blog, 2 1/2 years is an eternity. During my time writing & researching for The Flotsam Diaries, I have seen many budding writers, ecologists, litter-pickers, and nature lovers come and go. Life overtakes, the passion subsides, health interrupts, different avenues of expression open.

For me, I love reading the thoughts that other people put down. Regular people, like myself. Those struggles & victories, new ways of looking at old problems -- I find it all inspiring. So today I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge and tip my hat to a few steadfast souls. People whom I met in my earliest days, and who are still treading their paths to this day. Their words flowing every week like a stream down a mountainside. Toward the ocean.

Sara Bayles of Santa Monica, CA started The Daily Ocean back in May of 2009.

The Daily Ocean gets sunsets like this as a perk!

Often I'll take a picture of a sunrise on my coast that becomes a sunset on hers. Same day, same sun, two coasts, two blogs. It's eerie, and perfect. Sara set a goal of doing a simple 20-minute cleanup 365 times, to see how much garbage she could pull from her beach in the equivalent of one year. Since then her work has taken her far outside her comfort zone -- as far as sailing the deepest blue of the South Pacific for weeks on a research vessel studying plastic in the sea! She's now coming to the end of her 365-day marathon, and I'm excited to see what's next.

Inspired by Sara's work, Danielle Richardet of It Starts with Me began clearing litter from the sand at Wrightsville Beach, NC in the summer of 2010.

It Starts with Me says this is NOT okay - and I agree

Danielle soon learned the the biggest scourge of her beach was cigarette butts. Thousands of cigarette butts seeping toxic filth into the sands. The documentary "It Starts With Me" -- following her story -- premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. At the time she had collected "only" 12,000 cigarette butts. Today that figure is 52,000+! But Danielle's story took an amazing twist just last week. After years of hard work & building support, citizens of Wrightsville Beach voted overwhelming to ban smoking on the beach. A mom & wife who cared about her family & community helped bring that community a huge victory for clean air and clean sands! Danielle, you rock!

"SuAsCo Al," The Trash Paddler, lives in Acton, MA -- an exurb of the Boston area.

SuAsCo Al has the best views of eastern Massachusetts!

An avid kayaker & naturalist, Al has been paddling the Sudbury, Assabet, and Concord (SuAsCo) Rivers for years. Back in 2005 he decided to stop simply paddling by the trash he always saw on its banks. Instead, he started picking it up, and has been blogging about his finds almost ever since! In his blog, Al shares incredible photos of Massachusetts scenery most never see, cool bits of history and architecture, and an ever-growing count of the heaps of trash that he removes from what should be pristine places. He is always a good read, and my hat is off for his persistence & the difference he makes every day.

In that same vein, meet Bernie Paquette of Vermont Litter with a Story to Tell.

Burlington, home of "Vermont Litter with a Story to Tell"

Bernie has a positivity that's hard to find these days. Keenly aware of the damage that trash & litter & plastic are doing to the environment, he approaches every situation as not so much a challenge, but an opportunity. A chance for people to see for themselves the beauty of their world, and their own power to keep it beautiful. Opportunities for businesses and citizens to work together for the benefit of everybody. All with the overarching theme that ours is a world worth fighting for. With a smile.

Last, but not least, a huge shout-out to Paul Sharp & Silke Stuckenbrock - founders of The Two Hands Project.

I admit, Two Hands is less of a blog than it is just a constant source of inspiration. It began with a simple belief: That anywhere, any time, any one of us can start making a difference with a bag or bucket, and our own two hands. That simple idea has now blossomed into an international juggernaut of reality-based environmental action, with a community of tens of thousands. I am so proud to call Paul & Silke friends and be even a small part of their work.

A "Two Hands" cleanup I did at the local post office

---

I know all too well the pushes, pulls, tugs, and currents of modern life. I know how disheartening it is to fight reckless corporate greed fed by political collusion. (See the recent -- and not yet dead -- attempts by the plastic bag industry to write legislation in Illinois, fought so bravely by Activist Abby.) When you see plastic trash above the Arctic Circle or read about it now in the Southern Ocean, you can feel so small.

Through the work they do, my friends above have always made me feel like the impossible is a little less impossible. And they do to this very day.

Thank you friends.

Curtis Cove Report - Oct 26, 2012

It's hard now to remember a time before Superstorm Sandy. Yet I was at the cove on Friday, October 26, just a few days before she arrived. Here's what I found.

1:15PM. Low tide. Bright sun, no clouds. Nearly 60 degrees, slight breeze blowing off the shore. A good day to be here.

Winds and tides had finished pushing much of last week's wrack high onto the backshore. The rest of the foreshore had a nice smooth profile with fine sand and beautiful striations from the last outgoing tide. This was a mixed day. One of beautiful rusty rocks:

Barnacle-laden medicine bottles:

Ephemeral wave-drawn artistry in the sand:

Rich textures created by wood & worm:

And a first -- my first lobster trap tag from Massachusetts:

Coastal currents travel south in these parts. The only way for this Massachusetts tag to have made it so far north is if it first floated far out into the wider Gulf of Maine. There it would have gotten caught in one or more of the counterclockwise drifts or rotations. It may have circled over & over for months or years before finally being spat out on the northern side of its rotation. From there, it rode waves & tides in, finally coming to rest in Biddeford, Maine. Wondrous thing, the ocean.

Still, with so much wrack to go through up on the backshore, it was certainly not going to be a light day.

94 pcs of rope, about 200 ft total

62 pcs of nonrope debris

157 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 2 (carpet tile, grommet)
• Foam/styrofoam: 6
• Fishing rope/net: 94
• Fishing misc.: 22 (6 vinyl trap scraps, 2 trap tags, 3 bumpers, 4 bait bags, 3 trap parts, 2 clawbands, glove, shotgun shell)
• Food-related plastics: 8 (old scrap from 2-ltr bottle bottom, 2 bottlecap seals, 3 cup scraps, 2 wrappers)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (aluminum can scrap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 15 (2 latex balloons, 4 balloon strings, 3 bag scraps, plasticized writing card, pen cap, Geobra/Playmobil toy person, cable tie, caution tape, packaging scrap)
• Scrap plastics: 6 (2 > 1" , 4 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 3 (3 fabric pieces)

A big rope day. A surprising find of styrofoam -- something that almost never shows up here at the cove. A ribbon that didn't take its own advice:

CAUTION: I may blow away

A plasticized/waterproof card with cryptic note:

Glad it wasn't "4 8 15 16 23 42"

And Flotsam Diaries' new mascot:

Not quite Harry Potter

The higher energy in the waves this week seems to have kept most of the lobster trap vinyl scraps at bay, while scouring & reshaping the whole cove and leaving much else behind. The calm before storm... wasn't so calm.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 10105
• Pcs fishing rope -- 2148
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4560

Aftermath

Superstorm Sandy.

I've been struggling to create a coherent set of thoughts about this monster. The wreckage and sadness on my computer screen speak so loudly to the heart of The Flotsam Diaries. Of overbuilt coastlines, rising tides, plastic lives. Polluted lives.

Yet writing about what Sandy has wrought from the lens of the Diaries has seemed gauche.

Maine was spared her worst. Our condo was spared entirely. We even got the recycling bins stored away safely so not one bottle blew out and besmirched our lawn. Our family is all OK. Even those family members in the direct path of the storm -- inland southern New Jersey -- suffered no worse than power outages or nearby tree limbs down.

Meanwhile New Jersey's coast bore so much. So much loss. Not to mention New York City herself, Long Island, Connecticut. Beyond. And of course before all that, death and destruction in the Caribbean too.

I work on human-scale events. Ripped beach balls, a broken umbrella base, flowerpot scraps. A menu blown from a beachside restaurant. Occasionally household rubbish that blows out of a trash bin and goes down a storm drain.

I have collected & cataloged more than 25,000 pieces of manmade debris. Some of it thoughtlessly left behind, some accidentally lost. Surely, some of it the poignant remains of some greater disaster.

25,000 pieces. When Sandy struck, each single solitary wave that hammered each town pulled that much debris into the ocean. Up and down a coastline stretching hundreds of miles. For hours and hours.

The scale of what one storm has done to people's lives is shocking. The scale of what it did to the ocean is shattering.

But on Tuesday morning, I went to my part of the ocean. I had to see it. It was almost a compulsion. I thought I was going in order to look for erosion and debris. It turns out, I was going in order to see this:

That hole in the heavens opened up as I was wrapping up my check-in. It lasted in its glory for about 30 seconds.

On the way to the cove, I had stopped at a convenience store for some coffee. I even chatted with the owner for about 5 minutes. I have never had the urge to pull over and get coffee on any trip to the beach. If I hadn't this time, I would have been gone from the cove before seeing -- and capturing -- this.

It brought to mind a line from my hero Tolkien:

"In the end, the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Tomorrow I'll be back at the cove, picking up debris like I always do. While folks 400 miles away do the same thing. On a different scale.

To them, my heart goes out and my hat is off.

Curtis Cove Report - Oct 19, 2012

This was originally going to be a report for Thursday, October 18. But my trip got cut short just as I was getting onto the beach. So I came back the next day. And what a difference a day can make!

Oct 18, 8:45AM - sand, cobbles, a little wrack

Oct 19, 8:45AM - mounds & bands of wrack!

There was no major weather system that moved through overnight Thursday. No massive winds. The tides were similar overnight as they had been Wednesday night. Yet this happened!

So, Friday, October 19th. 8:45AM. Thick clouds, large flocks of migratory birds going past. And a lot of seaweed. Sadly, where there's seaweed, there's plastic. Thursday's sunny skies, birdsong, and images of:

and:

became Friday's gloom:

The waves overnight Thursday night brought both a huge dump and big scour event. In addition to all the seaweed up high, much sand had been pulled back down low again. The 200-lb mass of knotted rope and trap bits that had been buried on the high foreshore all summer was peeking out again.

Kicking through the seaweed (and hundreds of sand fleas still clinging to their warmth) was depressing. You always hope that maybe things aren't really as bad in the oceans as you think. Then you realize that yes, yes they are. Here's what I found:

77 pcs of rope, about 75 ft total

248 pcs of nonrope debris

325 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 5 (plywood scrap, carpet swatch, 3 feet/bases)
• Foam/styrofoam: 1
• Fishing rope/net: 77
• Fishing misc.: 137 (12 claw bands, 112 vinyl trap scraps, trap tag, 2 bumpers, 3 trap parts, bait baggie, 4 bait bags, glove, fishing line)
• Food-related plastics: 32 (2 bottlecaps, 3 o-rings, fresh McCafe cup and lid, 21 cup scraps, 4 cutlery scraps)
• Food-related glass/metal: 6 (can scraps)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 25 (6 bag scraps, 1 mylar balloon, 3 industrial bottlecaps, cigarette, diaper, sewage disk, duct tape, 2 cable ties, lg heavy float (?) fragment, shirt tag, stick-on hook, cover/cap, cord, 4 heavy clear plastic scraps)
• Scrap plastics: 40 ( 19 > 1" , 21 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 2 (fabric scraps)

A little comparison. More than a year and a half ago now, in March 2011, Hooksett, New Hampshire's sewage treatment facility had a major accident. They flushed into the river 4 million "sewage disks" -- little plastic mesh disks meant to be suspended in the tanks and give bacteria extra habitat for growing and breaking down sewage. About 400,000 remain unaccounted for. They'll be washing up for decades. This one came into Curtis Cove on the 19th:

After all that time in the harsh sea, it looks as good as new. Unstained, flexible, perfect. So how long do you think it's taken for this bottlecap/twist-cap to look like this?

Plastic is forever. And while it's all out there in the ocean being forever, it's also getting poked, chewed, and consumed.

All due respect to NOAA, the problem isn't "marine debris." It's plastic pollution. And it will only keep getting worse as long as we keep dancing around it.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9948
• Pcs fishing rope -- 2054
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4554

Curtis Cove Report - Oct 11, 2012

Thursday October 11. 1:30PM. 55 degrees, bright skies, mild gusts. A real autumn feel.

This was another beautiful day. The Little River marsh behind the cove was awash in rust & ochre:

On the beach, the power of the ocean had pulled down a lot of older sand, revealing once-buried rope chunks. It also carved out nice cliffs amid the high sands and wrack:

Meanwhile, down at the muddy lip where the low-tide ripples lapped the shore, otherworldly tubeworm "condos" stood proudly:

In the end, this was a very "unsorted" day. Masses of cobbles and pebbles came up high. Masses of sand, mud, and wrack slumped down. The ocean rearranged its coastal furniture quite a bit. So what would that mean for the collection?

26 pcs of rope, about 60 ft total

57 pcs of nonrope debris

87 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 26
• Fishing misc.: 34 (20 vinyl trap scraps, bait bag, 8 trap parts, trap tag, 4 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 8 (bottle - old & scoured, bottlecap, 5 cup scraps, straw - old & brittle)
• Food-related glass/metal: 6 (2 can scraps, 4 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 9 (bag scrap, 3 cable ties, bucket rim, flower tag, circular base, rubberband, air filter scrap)
• Scrap plastics: 4 (3 > 1" , 1 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 0

In the end, not a huge haul. With much of the lighter sand and wrack pulled back downshore, probably the light & bouncy plastics went back to the sea. What was left behind was mostly larger and bulkier than usual. Sizable chunks of rusty trap, bigger scraps of broken plastics, heavy seaglass -- even the vinyl trap scraps tended to be larger than usual.

More sobering, look closer.

Om, nom, nom

The synthetic (read: plastic) fiber swatch on the left has been chewed and bored by various denizens of the deep. The hard piece of styrene on the right has been poked by many teeth/beaks, and ripped & torn by others.

Plastic seas feeding plasticized fish. This isn't science fiction. It's not some dystopian future. It's now. In the beautiful state of Maine.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9623
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1977
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4442

Curtis Cove Report - Oct 6, 2012

Saturday, October 6. 10:15AM. A bright morning inland, misty with a seabreeze at low-tide. Temps in the low 60s. A little overnight drizzle--most obvious at the high-tide line.

Clues in the sand

There was good sorting of wrack & debris. And enough energy in a couple tides to push up and over the foreshore "barrier" onto the high ground beyond. Overall? Just a beautiful day to be at a breezy, deserted beach. A day of snail shell graveyards...

Also well-sorted into this one "nest" 

Beautiful balls of quartz...

Once a mountain-root, now beach rubble

Violet rivulets running through wrack-stained sand...

Unfiltered, it really looked like this!

And one of the few pieces of local litter I've found here in the past 10 months...

Hope they enjoyed the view

Amid the wrack there was definitely an uptick in what washed in. I found...

29 pcs of rope, about 26 ft total

103 pcs of nonrope debris

132 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 1
• Fishing rope/net: 29
• Fishing misc.: 69 (52 lobster trap vinyl scraps, 9 trap parts, 2 bait bags, 5 claw bands, fishing line)
• Food-related plastics: 8 (bottlecap o-ring, 5 cup scraps, food wrapper, straw)
• Food-related glass/metal: 3 (fresh aluminum can, old can top, sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 12 (3 balloon string, latex balloon neck, cigarette, bandaid, bag scrap, 2 cords, silicone strip, flower tag, umbrella base)
• Scrap plastics: 10 (4 > 1" , 6 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 0

The numbers were definitely up. And it was all the usual. Including the fact that about 3/4 of it was lobster-fishing debris. No surprise. In the Gulf of Maine as many as one million lost, derelict traps are rotting on the seabed right now. Our legacy to our grandkids.

The mists actually picked up throughout my collection. A lot of moisture pulled in from the sea was gathering into clouds inland, and the drive home was a gray and ominous one. Neat to have been there to see it happen.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9536
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1951
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4422

Curtis Cove Report - Sep 27, 2012

Thursday, September 27, 2012, 1:30PM. Hour and a half before low tide. My first autumn visit to the cove.

One final hurrah

This was a day of dragonflies, white butterflies, honeybees. Color. The last bits of life and warmth before the end. Even the rockpools teemed with vibrance & life!

Look closely, you'll see at least a dozen krill in this pic

The past week saw some seriously windy days inland. But the waves here at the beach hadn't crested very high. And a lot of blow-down spoke of winds howling offshore, not on. The same blow-down also revealed at least a couple once-buried goodies.

I see you, bait bag!

The sorting was better this week than last. But there were still jumbles of rock massed here and there -- including an impressive rock wall built up at the back of the southern foreshore.

Chock-a-block with new & old wrack

So, what did all that vibrancy & energy mean for debris? Well, this is one clue:

The wrong colors

It was going to be a bigger day than last week. Here's what I ended up with:

33 pcs of rope, about 30 ft total

93 pcs of nonrope debris

126 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 1
• Fishing rope/net: 33
• Fishing misc.: 45 (22 vinyl coating scraps, 3 bait bags, 2 bumpers, 4 trap parts, 3 trap tags, 2 fishing lines, 6 claw bands, shotgun shell, poly/rubber glove scrap, shotgun shell wadding)
• Food-related plastics: 11 (bottle scrap, 2 bottlecaps, 7 cup scraps, food wrapper scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (beer bottle)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 14 (mylar balloon, 2 trash bag scraps, 5 cords, duct tape, plug, lock cover (?), 2 cable ties, mouse rollerball)
• Scrap plastics: 19 ( 11 > 1" , 8 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 2 (metal clip, sock scrap)

2 1/2 times the amount of debris this week compared to the previous. And this week was also interesting both for how large many of the scraps were, and for how lightweight.

The soak tank

Curtis Cove is actually notable for how much debris comes in from the seafloor. So to have this much floatable this week? Something strange in the winds & waves, for sure.

Also this week, my most unexpected find yet:

Hello World!

Yes, an old-school rubber mouse ball. If you can imagine it, you can imagine it in the ocean.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9404
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1922
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4370