Collection Report - November 8, 2013

A fresh collection report -- first in a long time!

Friday, November 8. 8:30AM. Just after low tide, a fairly weak one. Chill in the air, upper 30s, but warm sun and little breeze made the morning pleasant.

Two weeks since I had been here last. And the beach was looking very different. More of a steady, significant slope from the back of the foreshore all the way down to the water's edge. Sand likely slushed and washed up from down low by energy in late October & the first days of November.

Down on the low foreshore, summer's algae was by now almost all dead/dying. All passing away with the warmth & sun of summer. Green turning back to brown & gray.

From top to bottom, the beach on Friday left no flat spots, no taper points. Just a clean unobstructed angle. Meaning likely fewer places for water & flotsam to settle out quietly. Would that mean a light collection day? This lobster-trap bait bag, blown high onto the backshore, suggested that winds may have blown in more than guessed.

Elsewhere on the beach the view was more amazing. I spotted a seam of really cool features along back of foreshore:

"Sand volcanoes" -- air pushed up from inside the sand by the overnight incoming tide, but unable to escape easily thanks to a tiny film of frost on the surface. Amazing world we live in.

So, what were the finds?

7 pcs of rope, about 15 ft total

120 pcs of nonrope debris

127 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 7
• Fishing misc.: 96 (85 vinyl scraps, 2 trap parts, ring, bumper, bait bag, 6 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 1 (cup bottom scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 2 (upholstery seam, huge bandaid)
• Scrap plastics: 21 ( 7 > 1" , 14 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 0

It was, by recent standards, a quiet week (blown-in bait bag aside).

Given the slope of the beach and mediocre energy (not storm-strong, not summer-gentle), not surprising to have a lighter-than-normal take. Actually fairly surprising still to be finding as much of the little vinyl bits as I did. Even though it was smeared in a very wide band from back of foreshore down well into the low rocks & cobbles.

The sea keeps giving, week after week.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 10617
• Total from fishing -- 9309 (87.7%)
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1928
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 6647

Collection Report - September 29, 2013

Sunday, September 29. 1:40PM, right at very weak low tide. 60 degrees. Bright, bright sun. Cool seabreeze coming in. Low energy week, unchanged largely since last week.

The foreshore still awash with jumbled and poorly sorted cobbles, pebbles, and wrack. On this early fall day the backshore still looked an awful lot like summer!

A truly beautiful day to have a beach all to myself.

Things I noticed this week: The slope down to the waterline felt longer, more gradual, more consistent & noticeable. There were fewer flat berms and falloffs. There was little sorting or piling of new cusps & mounds. And little new wrack come in. But at very back of last high-tide line (20-30 feet up from what had been the end of the live-algae zone), I found an area of smushed & sand-tossed loose wrack. Lots of vinyl & plastic churned up through this loose wrack.

It's rare at Curtis Cove to see that kind of mixing. Usually the vinyl sits on top, but this stuff got churned into the back of the foreshore, yet not dragged away. As though a couple last high waves made an energetic slush, that then quickly died back away.

So what did I find?

528 pcs of nonrope debris

528 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 0
• Fishing misc.: 481 (456 vinyl lobster trap coating bits, 9 trap parts, 2 bumpers, big ball of fishing line, 13 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 11 (bottom of drink bottle, 4 bottlecap o-rings, 5 cup scraps, container)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (tiny aluminum can scrap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 9 ("silk" flower, 6 cable ties, o-ring, anchor)
• Scrap plastics: 25 (4 > 1" , 21 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (sea glass)

Another zero-rope week! That's become a very good indicator of a very low-energy week at the cove. As is the return of large masses of lobster trap vinyl:

Beyond the vinyl, I did find one other interesting thing:

This bleached, faded, & abraded cup surely has a tale to tell. Who lost it? Where? When? Why? How? So many questions -- all of them essential if we're ever going to reclaim clean oceans & give our descendants reason not to despise us. Yet none of them answerable.

The tides go on.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9848
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1862
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 6123

Collection Report - September 15, 2013

Saturday September 15. 1:15PM, near low tide. Mid-60s, nice seabreeze. Mostly sunny. Fall-like crisp air.

Beach looking still a lot like September 7. If maybe a bit more "unkempt." The live algae down low on the foreshore was still there -- though getting more muddled & ripped up. The low foreshore a jumble of cobbles & pebbles & boulders.

Higher against back of foreshore August's clusters & clumps of pebble-sized rocks were still there. But matted down. "Aging." Smushing themselves back down, unrestored by the late summer's weak waves.

Sadly those weak waves brought their payload of vinyl lobster trap bits again.

This time instead of up against the back of the foreshore, the bulk was strewn amid the standing water and boulders of the live-algae zone. A one-day slightly higher tide seems to have had enough energy to first spill over the foreshore berm, and then partially drag some of the vinyl load back down.

But again, there was no energy for bringing in large & heavy things like rope. It was another zero-rope day. And another sobering day.

1151 pcs of nonrope debris

1151 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 0
• Fishing misc.: 1043 (979 vinyl lobster trap coating scraps, 5 bumpers, 5 trap parts, 54 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 30 (bottlecap, 3 bottlecap o-rings, 24 cup scraps, cutlery scrap, straw scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 2 (aluminum can scraps)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 11 (balloon, PhoneMate clip, Nifty Magnetic SpaceSaver Binder scrap, cord, cable tie, 2 plant stakes, anchor, 3 ring seals)
• Scrap plastics: 64 ( 16 > 1" , 48 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 1 (tile scrap)

A couple of the wash-ins were kind of cool. An ancient phone clip from an old PhoneMate answering machine system:

And a very worn & aged scrap from a "Nifty Magnetic SpaceSaver Binder":

Neither of these makes sense as ocean debris. Yet both were in the ocean. Probably from either an accidental trash-bag rip near a gutter, or debris from a violent coastal storm years ago.

But of course, the story this week, as many weeks running, is the lobster trap debris:

979 pieces of vinyl. A record.

That's barely enough to recreate one lost lobster trap. In the hour & a half that I was picking these pieces up at least 6 more lobster traps were lost in the waters of the Gulf of Maine.

That's not sustainable.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 8991
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1812
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 5424

Collection Report - August 30, 2013

A return to beach and late summer memories.

Friday Aug 30, 1PM. Bright sun. Sea breeze, upper 70s, puffy clouds in the sky at different layers. The beginning of Labor Day weekend. (A few families wandering around the cove at the far end, enjoying the last of summer.)

In the past 2 1/2 weeks since my August 11 visit, the waves had built mounds & collection spots of pebbles & cobbles along the back of the foreshore. But there was still a mass fresh green on the low foreshore -- algae still growing, not being ripped up. So whatever was going on, it was low energy overall.

Also, underfood I felt a lot of fine, soft sand blown up from foreshore onto the backshore. Dry sand, low waves, and seabreezes blowing it up, up, up. Gorgeous sand! Fine and white and soft as dust.

Sadly, lower down was anything but gorgeous. It was a shocking day for vinyl. The knolls of cobbles helped slow the water down and let the wrack/vinyl settle out into carpets. Every nook and layer of carpet was just flooded with the vinyl coatings of dead & rusted-out lobster traps.

I followed big smears of wrack-carpet and vinyl far down dozens of yards toward the water. I picked & picked all I could. But I know I didn't get it all. This handful came from a dozen square feet:

What a day. Yet in spite of all the vinyl, I collected exactly ZERO pcs of rope! Another sign of low energy. Big things like rope, trap vents, large plastic chunks -- they need energy to get into the cove. The tiny vinyl bits are the opposite, they like it calm.

And calm it was.

1065 pcs of nonrope debris

1065 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 0
• Fishing misc.: 972 (928 vinyl lobster trap coating scraps (!), 3 trap parts, 2 bumpers, 38 claw bands, buoy o-ring scrap)
• Food-related plastics: 30 (4 bottlecap o-rings, 19 cup scraps, 2 bread tags, mini-fork, spoon, 3 straws)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (aluminum can bottom)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 19 (latex balloon, cigarette, hair band, toy truck front (old), 3 tubing pcs, 3 plant stakes, 8 upholstery scraps, cable tie)
• Scrap plastics: 35 ( 8 > 1" , 27 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 1 (paper towel)
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 7 (5 sea glass, fabric scrap, pc of leather)

This here is the story of the Gulf of Maine:

Does anything else need to be said, really?

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 7064
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1780
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 3818

Curtis Cove Report - June 13, 2013

Thursday, June 13. 9:30 AM. Mid-60s and on its way up. Light breeze, 1/2 hour before low tide, bright sun... Bring on summer!

And still all to myself

Long lines of clouds in the sky, reverberating energy up and down just like a plucked guitar string -- or a pebble thrown in the ocean.

"Gravity Waves"

It had been a mostly low-energy couple of weeks since my last visit, with a healed summer slope to the beach as a whole. The backshore, so ravaged in February, was back & in blossom.

The low foreshore, heavily saturated by a week of heavy & steady rains, swirled with standing pools and life.

Walking along the backshore, my feet sank into fresh sand that had been blown or washed on top of the last remnants of winter's wrack. Bits of rope stuck out of the mid-foreshore, signs that their overburden had been stripped off (and then tossed onto the backshore). What would that mean for any washed-in plastic? Well, you tell me.

184 pcs of rope, about 140 ft total

158 pcs of nonrope debris

342 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 2 (fiberglass fragments)
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 184
• Fishing misc.: 81 (61 vinyl trap scraps, 8 bait bags/scraps, 2 bumpers, 2 trap parts, 3 balls of fishing line, 4 claw bands, trap tag)
• Food-related plastics: 19 (bottlecap seal, bottle, 14 cup scraps, bread wrapper tag, tiny plate scrap, straw)
• Food-related glass/metal: 3 (2 aluminum can scraps, seaglass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 29 (6 bag scraps, 3 mylar balloon scraps, Clorox bottlecap scrap, nonfood bottlecap, hair band, 2 very old/broken toy scraps, 7 cords, 2 rubber belts/straps, 2 woven straps, plant ID stake, 3 cable ties)
• Scrap plastics: 18 ( 10 > 1" , 8 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 1 (paper backing/lining)
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 5 (3 fabric scraps, 1"Lobster Cove" scrap, shoelace)

More of the usual. And maybe a little unusual:

The steel inside this large lobster trap scrap has all rusted away. All that's left is the permanent, nondegradable vinyl coating. How long would it take to do that, do you think?

And of course, more subtle evidence of commercial fishing's effects on the Gulf of Maine:

Bleach bottles and bleach bottlecaps are common finds. After sanitizing decks & work surfaces on a rocking boat, bleach bottles are often accidentally (or not accidentally) dumped overboard. They don't go away.

Neither do the plastic remnants of early mornings out to sea.

I have found dozens -- or hundreds -- of scraps of coffeecups and cup lids washed up on my one shore. (Many or most with sea-creature bite & poke marks on them.) More than could be accounted for by seaside strollers. Coffee is an excellent 5AM wake-up for a long day at sea. But pitching a coffee cup overboard when the coffee's gone is bad form.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 4159
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1627
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 1701

410

410. That's the number of little bits of vinyl coating from lobster traps I found on February 19. All picked from a thin unfrozen line at the back of the foreshore at Curtis Cove, Biddeford, Maine:

That makes 5237 pieces from the cove in the past year.

We consumers demand "cheap" food, "cheap" everything. In the 1970s, plastic-coated lobstering gear became readily available. Seeming cheap & effficient, Maine lobstermen had no choice. They had to start using it. Those who didn't, soon became ex-lobstermen, pushed out of a competitive business by downward pressures.

See more about the issue of plastic fishing gear in the Gulf of Maine at my Portland Press Herald blog "Undercurrents." A brand-new article on this topic posted today!

Curtis Cove Report - Nov 25, 2012

After a byweek and a big Thanksgiving feast, it was time to return to Curtis Cove....Sunday, 1:15PM. An hr before low-tide. 37 degrees, mostly cloudy & blustery. A cold day!

The beachface was returning to its "usual" shape after Sandy. Sand up high, exposed cobbles down at the low foreshore. And sheets of Sandy-dumped wrack. With its usual cargo.

Rope playing hide-and-seek

"Let's... Tie It!" And release it :(

Curtis Cove Protection Battalion

c.1975 Schlitz beer can top

It was an interesting week for washout patterns. Sand rivulets ran from NW to SE in bands down to the water's edge. My foot often went through what looked like solid sand, which was actually just resting on top of loose wrack. Also, with Sandy gone, the normally gentle sea returned. And gentle seas drop out smaller, finer plastics. Here's what I found:

174 pcs of rope, about 150 ft total

178 pcs of nonrope debris

352 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 174 (150 ft)
• Fishing misc.: 74 (3 trap vents, 44 vinyl coating scraps, 4 bumpers, 3 trap nettings, trap tag, 3 bait bags, ring scrap, top of hard plastic buoy, 14 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 30 (3 old bottles, 1 bottlecap o-ring, 18 cup scraps, 3 food wrappers, old fork scrap, 2 straws, 2 bread tags)
• Food-related glass/metal: 6 (5 can scraps, bottle cap)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 24 (10 bag scraps, 2 balloons, eaten glove, jug top/cap, old truck scrap, soldier, shovel scoop, 3 cable ties, plant pot tag, long handle, POLICE tape, caulk scrap)
• Scrap plastics: 36 ( 16 > 1" , 20 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 1 (air filter scrap)
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 7 (fabric scraps)

A varied mess this was! Much of the big debris & rope was clearly Sandy-related, and had been buried in the wrack back on November 10. But as predicted, the calmer seas brought back much of the more typical small debris to go along with it. All in all, some very interesting -- and sobering -- finds.

Bitten/mauled plastic glove

Lobster trap tag from 1996

Heavily encrusted trap vent

Sea-bottom-dragged Gatorade bottle

When this year started, there was a big question: All the trash that I first found at the beach, was it still coming in from week to week? Or had it built up over long years and was not actually a big issue?

Which does it seem?

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 11019
• Pcs fishing rope -- 2661
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4608

Fishing Industry Debris Clogs Gulf of Maine

A warm "thank-you" to the Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram for running the op-ed I wrote about the debris I'm finding at Curtis Cove yesterday in the Sunday newspaper. This cove, a "protected" wildlife habitat, is an incredible open-air laboratory of so much of what's currently going wrong in the Gulf of Maine. And in a sense, the wider world.

76.1% of the plastic I pull from the beach there is directly related to lobstering. There have to be other ways to do this work. If there aren't, we'll just continue to finish off the complex web of life in the sea that sustains us.

Below is the original text of the op-ed that I wrote. 99% of it made it into the Press Herald, but I wanted it documented as originally written. As hopefully a pathway into a conversation that we in the state need to have, and that will in the end hopefully benefit all.

Curtis Cove, a deep, horseshoe-shaped nook, lies at the southern tip of Biddeford’s coastline. There, gentle waters lap against pebbles and fine gray sand. Rocky tide pools teem with life. Beach roses bloom among the rip-rap. It’s protected space, set aside as vital habitat for great annual seabird migrations.

Unmolested, untouristed. Supposedly free from the modern world.

Yet the modern world swirls in on every tide.

Along the wrack line, the eye catches them. Little flecks of unnatural green, bright yellow. See one, and you can’t help but see more. A few blue, a white fleck, a red one.

They’re the colors of lobster traps, like those seen stacked in front yards and docks and postcards. Except these aren’t lobster traps anymore. They’re part of what happens when a lobster trap dies.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is old news. The Gulf of Maine is its own plastic garbage patch. Much of our marine litter rolls and bounces along the sea floor, washing up at places like Curtis Cove. That litter includes countless scraps of nondegradable vinyl coating, burst from countless derelict lobster traps rotting on the Gulf of Maine seabed.

I visit the cove weekly, collecting and cataloging what washes in. Along just 150 feet of it I have collected 10,617 pieces of man-made garbage since late winter.

Of course it isn’t all lobster-trap bits. I have found plant pots, fiberglass siding, a car arm rest, carpet scraps, a saw handle, a crate lid, half of a coathook, part of an outdoor thermometer, even an antique clay pipe.

But sadly, most of what washes up here is directly related to lobstering. 8,076 pieces, 76.1% of everything I’ve found. 477 lobster claw bands; 144 trap bumpers; 119 bait bags; 2487 fishing rope scraps -- some 4/5 mile total length. Various other scraps of traps, buoys, etc.

And 4563 flecks of lobster trap vinyl coating.

All from 150 feet of protected cove, in a state with over 3,000 miles of coastline.

It’s ugly, of course. It’s litter. It shouldn’t be there. But beyond that, plastics in the ocean adsorb terrible toxins. They kill sealife and shore dwellers. Many of the claw bands (lost overboard as lobsters are being banded) have fish bite marks all over them -- possibly from young cunner. The harder vinyl trap coatings could be swallowed whole, tear an animal up, and survive intact to kill again.

Maine’s Department of Marine Resources licenses 3 million lobster traps each year. How many have been lost? Nobody knows. From the time that the first trap was put into Maine waters all the way up to 2009, DMR kept no record.

Now they require lobstermen to submit a request in order to get replacement tags. From 2009-2011, they received about 38,000 requests per year -- which of course doesn’t account for undeclared losses.

Fishing with rope & traps means losing gear. That’s reality. When it was biodegradable, it mattered less. But around 1980 vinyl-coated steel traps and plastic bait bags/rope became the gear of choice. Because it seemed cheaper, both in cost and effort.

30+ years at 38,000+ lost traps a year means, conservatively, one million derelict plastic-coated lobster traps on the seafloor by now.

Of course a few wash up. Every beach and island has its wrecked traps. Others are grappled and removed by nonprofits, fishermen, & volunteers. But most sit hidden in the deep, rot, and shed their plastic bits over decades.

Fact: One of the state’s largest industries uses a business model that plans for losing hundreds of tons of nondegradable plastic into the Gulf annually -- and offers no mitigation! Industry’s debris, our great-grandchildren’s problem.

It’s well past time to drop the myth of “cheap” plastic. Plastic gear’s costs are very insidious and very real. Besides, the frenzied rush of “more, cheaper, more” has proven to benefit very few. And it leaves a growing legacy of dangerous, persistent pollution that washes up all around us.

It’s time to stop, look at the sand at our feet, and really see what’s there. We must treat our resources with respect. Return to degradable gear, demand a fair price for fishing responsibly, and promote the industry internationally as a model of a conscientious and sustainable fishery.

Whatever we do today, our descendants will still find scraps of yesterday’s “cheap” fishing gear on their shores and inside their sealife for decades. But if we change the game now, maybe at least they’ll look back on us and not shake their heads.

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