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 - October 16, 2013

Wednesday, October 16. 1:30PM. A cpl hrs before low tide. Gray & overcast. No rain. 60 degrees. Slight breeze coming from the north. The back of the backshore was ringed by a mix of summery greens and autumnal oranges/reds. No freeze yet on the coast. Blackening wrack from last week's wash-ins lined the backshore of the beach.

Amid the blackening seaweed was the rotting "cliffs" of white sand at the back of the foreshore, also cut back by the previous weeks. Now aging and showing no new pulverizing.

Yet amid the cobbles on low foreshore, summer's algae blooms were dying back quickly on their exposed rocks. Strong (if low) waves had clearly been carving at them this week, ripping them from all except the largest of cobbles and boulders.

And this day brought me a new find at Curtis Cove:

My first ever sea urchin shell ("test") from Curtis Cove. A nice find.

So, low waves but high energy. What washed in?

25 pcs of rope, about 25 ft total

182 pcs of nonrope debris

207 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 25
• Fishing misc.: 154 (127 lobster trap vinyl scraps, 15 trap parts, trap tag, bait bag, bumper, 5 claw bands, 3 balls of fishing line, o-ring from buoy)
• Food-related plastics: 4 (cup scraps)
• Food-related glass/metal: 1 (beer bottle, local drop)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 4 (small scrap of window screen, 2 cords, old abraded button)
• Scrap plastics: 16 ( 6 > 1" , 10 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 3 (seaglass)

I found a surprising number of heavy metal lobster trap parts, as well as freshly washed-in rope. I also found lower-than-"normal" counts for trap vinyl coatings. That all points to an ocean changing with the seasons.

On to next week.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 10268
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1902
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 6399

Collection Report Feb 23, 2011

Greetings again from sunny Bay View, Saco, Maine, February 23, 2011:

11:00AM, 30 degrees, ~2 hrs past low tide

The word of this week was "dull."

Only tiny organic powder on the tide lines

This week saw a mid-winter warmup (and then cool-down), and a bunch of very blustery days with winds gusting over 30 MPH (see bottom of links here and here). Yet, again, that energy didn't bring much to the shore. Why? Check out these charts.

Wk of 2/13-2/19, from http://www.wunderground.com

Wk of 2/20-2/26, from http://www.wunderground.com

Westerly winds. From 2/13 (the time of my last report) to 2/23,* our winds very rarely came from the east (that is, from the ocean). Whatever energy was being delivered to the surface of the ocean was being sent offshore and away from my beach.

Result? There wasn't a lot of debris -- natural or manmade -- this week. Here's Zone N:

52 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 21 (trap scrap, 2 bits of rope, 7 claw bands, 11 trap coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 5 (3 wads of chewing gum, 1 bottlecap seal, 1 gum wrapper)
• Food-related metal/glass: 6 (bottlecap, 2 sea glass, can scrap, 2 wrappers)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 16 (inc. part of Xmas tree branch, pink doll dress, balloon scrap, o-ring, bottle cap, twist-tie)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 2
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 2 (leather sole scraps)

The winter usual, heavily dominated by fishing material and non-food plastics, including this adorable little rubbery-plastic doll's dress.

Size Zero

Otherwise, a typical -- if quiet -- week. As for Zone S?

20 finds:

• Building materials: 1 (bit of asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 9 (3 rope (2 very big pieces), claw band, 5 trap coating scraps)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (can scrap)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 3 (small scraps)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 1 (wrapper)
• Misc./unique: 4 (leather scraps)

I won't pretend that this is exciting. I think even those two pieces of rope were just older bits finally unlocked from the ice.

Truth? It's wonderful to stroll a quiet beach and feel like it's actually clean, healthy. It's a reminder of a world we once had, and a world that our children deserve to have again. I'm glad for the respite. But I know it's an illusion. Even in the Arctic now, birds are dying with pieces of plastic lodged in their bellies. There is no safe haven from a throwaway world. Only, if we're lucky, a momentary reprieve. Next week, or the week after, or that gully-washer storm we'll get in April, reality will return home.

---

* Note that big blast of winds from the east on Friday 2/25? That may play into the next collection report; wait and see.