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 - Nov 10, 2012

Saturday, November 10. 1:45PM, just past low tide. Beautiful slack water, with barely a ripple kissing the soft mud at the lowest foreshore.

A week now after Superstorm Sandy, and the high foreshore was still a cliff of wrack, wrack, and wrack.

But much of the storm's cast-up sand and mud was oozing back toward the sea. Burying many of the low foreshore cobbles, and leaving ephemeral beauty in its wake.

Higher up the slope, other things were left.

This was a week of high-energy waves meeting a steepened beach face, and the two trying to work out some new meeting of minds. Most of the debris had been dumped & pushed high up onto the foreshore, and was big & bulky like that SOLO cup. Very little small stuff managed to settle out, high or low.

Here's what I found:

124 pcs of rope, about 250 ft total

57 pcs of nonrope debris

181 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 1 (toilet seat rim)
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 124
• Fishing misc.: 21 (10 bait bags, 5 trap tags, 3 trap parts, vent, bumper, vinyl coating)
• Food-related plastics: 14 (old, dragged bottle, bottle cap, cap o-ring, cap seal, cap scrap, 3 PS cup scraps, 3 food wrappers, cookie tub, spoon)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (bottlecap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 11 (7 baggies/scraps, sleeve/grommet, 2 strapping, crate seal)
• Scrap plastics: 9 (6 > 1" , 3 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (fabric scrap)

This is the signature of a beach still in the grip of Sandy's aftermath. It's not the amount of debris, but the size of the pieces. And it's not the usual dense seabottom flecks, but lighter, bulkier, buoyant material hurled over the distant rocks at the head of the cove. 77% directly related to the lobstering industry. More of the Gulf of Maine's lasting legacy.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 10667
• Pcs fishing rope -- 2487
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4564

Curtis Cove Report - Aug 31, 2012

Friday, August 31. 7AM. Already a bright, bright day. Crisp cool air, but the promise of a hot afternoon, following a delicious week in the low 70s with no humidity.

New tracks in the fine sand high on the backshore brought a reminder of the changing season, the fast aging summer.

Sandpiper highway

Places like Curtis Cove are vital to thousands -- millions -- of annual migrators. As these sandpipers picked through their own finds on the beach, I wondered how well they could tell food from flotsam.

One of these is a slipper shell, the other a coffeecup lid

And I wondered how many birds, fish, and sea mammals would think this bright green confetti -- dragged and smeared down along the low foreshore -- a feast:

Found the lobster-trap vinyl scrap motherlode

And I wondered, how many places left in the world can truly be called protected?

On to the week's finds:

42 pcs of rope, about 35 ft total

402 pcs of non-rope debris

444 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 42
• Fishing trap gear: 216 (204 vinyl trap coatings, 7 bumpers, name tag, vent, 2 trap parts, buoy rod)
• Fishing misc.: 43 (39 clawbands, 4 fishing line)
• Food-related plastics: 25 (20 cup scraps, 2 food wrappers, cutlery handle, old straw scrap, cooking-temp stick)
• Food-related glass/metal: 7 (6 aluminum can bottoms, sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 33 (baseball cap visor insert, long stapled strap, shoulder strap, 2 cable ties, vinyl carrying bag neck, 3 anchors, 3 plant pot tag bits, 2 o-rings, 2 tubes, sticker, screw-top neck, carabiner, large garbage bag, 5 bag scraps, cigarette, gauze patch, rubberband, comb, shovel handle loop, teacup handle, 2 nonfood packaging scraps)
• Scrap plastics: 70 ( 26 > 1", 44 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 8 (2 fabric scraps, 6 cords)

A few strange things this week. First, lots of fishing rope after a lull. And after a similar drought, 6 aluminum can bottoms scoured up from the deep! I wonder what has changed in the currents or the sea floor to let them finally land again. Each week brings new questions.

The only other real oddities were this:

Baseball cap brim insert

and this:

Intact -- though gnarled -- comb

Somehow all of the fabric of that baseball cap got left behind, leaving only the plastic brim insert to beach at the cove. And it's rare to find a comb still intact -- even if this one shows some signs of banging around on rocks & debris.

Another week of beautiful sights, and way too much garbage.

Curtis Cove Report - Jul 27, 2012

Friday July 27, 1PM. Curtis Cove. And the beach roses are in bloom.

Temps were in the 70s, with heavy clouds & heavier air. The skies threatened a couple times, but at best pelted the ground with a few small drizzles.

Lunar landscape

I've always wanted to see how long it really takes debris to return to the sand here. It had only been 4 days since my July 23 collection. What would the beach hold? Well.... a lot of this:

A wrack line of seaweed and plastic

Depressing -- and eye-opening. After an hour or so on the beach, here's what I pulled up from my 150-foot zone.

38 pcs of rope, about 35 ft total

573 pcs of non-rope debris

611 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 3 (2 vinyl floormat scraps, vinyl upholstery scrap)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 38 (all rope)
• Fishing trap gear: 396 (383 vinyl trap scraps, 11 bumpers, 2 bait bags)
• Fishing misc.: 45 (1 fishing line, 44 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 32 (26 #6 cup scraps, 3 bottle-cap o-rings, 2 candy wrappers, 1 bread tie)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (can scraps)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 15 (1 bandaid, 1 comb fragment, 1 toy sticker, 7 cable ties, 1 windshield washer bottlecap, 1 medicine blister pack, 1 'impatiens' plant ID tag, 1 rubber cord, 1 "DENT PIK")
• Scrap plastics: 71 (20 >1", 51 scraps <1")
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 9 (1 glove, 8 fabric pieces)

611, in just 4 days. Crazy! And of course tilted extremely heavily toward lobstering debris, including another insane haul of vinyl trap flecks. But the waves also brought many things that had no business being in the sea. Including:

A faded sticker from a toy

Windshield washer fluid bottle cap

'Impatiens' tag from planter/garden

Battered comb -- where's the rest?

"DENT PIK"?  Not even in Google!

Vinyl flooring scrap

Vinyl upholstery scrap

And of course poignant reminders of why plastics don't belong in the ocean in any amount:

Sealife-nibbled/poked cup scrap

Of all the finds on Friday, exactly one -- a candy wrapper -- was a local drop. Everything else came from the ocean. It was there because everything we use -- and lose -- is now plastic.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 6396
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1650
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 2779

Introducing Curtis Cove

I've mentioned in passing that my work lately has expanded beyond one beach. Time to dish on what I've been up to these past several months.

Welcome to Curtis Cove, Biddeford, Maine:

I discovered this place in December 2010. It's at the end of a long, winding, wonderful seashore drive that wends past salt marshes and beautiful homes. The road grows more & more narrow and rustic -- and isolated. Then, rounding a sharp corner bordered by a rip-rap seawall and thick brambles, it ends abruptly at a private dirt access road (the arrow below).

When I got to the end, I hopped out for a look. The cove was private, so I didn't stay long. It should have been a little slice of heaven. An untouched secret shore with rocky headlands at its front, a salt marsh & tidal estuary at its rear. But what I saw shocked me. The entire beach was littered in garbage. Rope, old cups, a balloon, innumerable lobster trap parts, unidentifiable but long-suffering plastic scraps, a tire.

This private, untouristed, unknown cove was a dump -- a huge collection spot for ocean-borne garbage. I took some pictures, and left heavy-hearted.

Fast-forward to Fall 2011, when I came across amazing news. The family that owned the whole 97-acre peninsula was selling. To a group of conservation organizations. One of the last undeveloped coastal gems in southern Maine was going to be preserved forever! And I just might have a chance to get back onto Curtis Cove to have a real look.

In the end, the peninsula, "Timber Point," came into the hands of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. I met with the refuge management, discussed my flotsam work with them, and suggested that Curtis Cove would be an ideal spot to see -- really see -- what's out there in the Gulf of Maine. And happily they agreed! Within weeks my permits had been signed & granted.

I was in!

On January 1, 2012, I visited Curtis Cove for the first time as a licensed Flotsam Diarist. I scouted the land and decided on a plan of attack for studying the beach. With the heavy influx of flotsam, I decided to focus on a 150-foot wedge of shoreline along the northern part of the cove. And I got to work. Thanks to a ridiculously mild winter, I was able to spend January and half of February cleaning off the age-old debris, finally getting to a clean "baseline" on February 22.

Since then, I've been returning weekly to scour the same 150-foot stretch of beach and see what's come in.

The results have been gobsmacking.

This is 1325 feet of fishing rope. More than 1/4 mile of rope, 757 individual pieces, washed in between February 29 and May 17. And it shows no signs of stopping, or slowing.

But far beyond just rope is the assortment of other debris, almost all plastic. A few examples. February 29:

Or March 7:

Or March 13:

Or the huge shocker, March 30:

On March 30 alone I collected 526 pieces of garbage -- 398 of them were little scraps of vinyl coating torn from derelict & rusting lobster traps. At least half a million derelict traps now rest on the floor of the Gulf of Maine. Each trap will release over a thousand of these vinyl scraps by the time it's done disintegrating. They don't go away.

Curtis Cove has always been a natural collection point of ocean debris. Seaweed still washes in two feet thick if the weather's right. As it decays (the nose won't miss this), it pours an amazing amount of nutrients back into the soil and the water. This rich environment supports wonderful tide pools, choc-a-bloc with life and diversity.

A nudibranch -- a shell-less snail

A gunnel, or "rock eel"

When the gulls bobbing on the incoming tide cry... or the geese soar by overhead straight as an arrow... or the surf roars as it breaks on the distant ledge at the head of the cove... or you discover a new creature you've never seen before... that's when you realize that this is a special place.

And when you see a gorgeous tide pool littered with modern junk:

...that's when you realize that the special places in the world are under assault. From our plastic lifestyle. And that this has to change. Curtis Cove is now a wildlife refuge. A place protected from the modern world. But there is no protection from what the modern world has dumped into the sea.

It's not really possible to overstate how badly the Gulf of Maine is being abused by persistent plastic garbage. But now that I have Curtis Cove to visit week after week, it is possible to shine a bright & searing light on it.