Collection Report - December 28, 2013

To readers of this blog it may seem that the Flotsam Diaries just went bye-bye. No! I've been visiting the beach in 2014 & recording. But getting them blogged hit roadblocks. Which I hope are behind!

So, without further ado, the next collection report. This from now half a year ago. Saturday, December 28, 2013. Noon, an hour before low tide. Lot of snow & flurries on the ground. Three storms back to back with little thawing.

Back of foreshore covered in snow. Foreshore down to tideline of course all cleared. A gorgeous, clean, white snow

Complete with rabbit tracks:

It was a day of overcast skies with peeks of sunshine. Hunters out in the marsh blasting shotguns -- geese flying off. With the snow, hard to say much difference from weeks past, all buried. But a beautiful day.

Low sun revealed every receding tideline lapping back. Able to count 28 or more individual waves receding.

As I was at home lying in bed, then making pancakes, the tide here at the cove was leaving this artwork on the ground.

Of course it wasn't all beauty, as ever. There was a lot of vinyl down low. I found the "line" of it, and it was kind of crazy how much popped up.

Overall, this all came out:

199 pcs of nonrope debris

199 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 0
• Fishing misc.: 162 (137 vinyl trap coating scraps, 18 trap parts, 3 bumpers, 4 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 6 (bottlecap seal, 4 cup scraps, silverware scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 8 (2 mylar balloon scraps, bag scrap, plant stake, 2 cable ties, 2 hard tubings)
• Scrap plastics: 22 ( 10 > 1" , 12 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (fabric scrap)

No picture of rope? That's because no rope washed in! Very unusual, but there was no rope in the non-snowy bits of beach that I was able to scour this week. Also very unusual was how much scrap trap debris was scattered around.

Don't want to step on this:

Plenty of that out there. 38,000 more traps like it each year.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 11260
• Total from fishing -- 9857 (87.5%)
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1944
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 7119