Collection Report Feb 5, 2011

Finally! After 2+ weeks of single-digit weather and multiple snowstorms, Saturday, Feb 5 gave a tiny window for beachcombing. In the morning the ground was frozen. At noon it was high-tide. But now, at 3:30PM, just before dusk, I had a chance.

The drifts by the dunes were easily 2 ft high

For the first time since Jan. 14 it (a) wasn't storming and (b) was above freezing! I opened a bag and started trolling. The conditions seemed right for finding more washed-up bits & bobs:

Where there's pulp, there's plastic

But just about then, Mother Nature turned mean. Again. We had been promised an "evening storm." (Which is one reason I wanted to get out and get this collection done while I could.) Well, the evening storm started at -- you guessed it -- 3:30PM.

Really?

The race was on. Every flake of snow was sticking, obscuring the view. I rushed through Zone N because I just couldn't abide another lost week. It wasn't thorough, but at least it was something. Sadly, by the time I got to Zone S, this was the view:

Hopeless

Foiled again. Admitting defeat, I went grumpily home.

Then I got good news. Things were looking up for the next day. It was supposed to be sunny and warmer. A clear sun might melt that snow, and I could pick up where I'd left off. So I came back on a bright, 36° F morning at 9:30, low tide. And the sun was already melting the snow. In fact, it was turning out to be the nicest day we'd had in weeks. A fact not lost on several other Mainers:

36 degrees?? Beach party!!!

I found a parking spot in the remarkably busy lot, and triumphantly reached the shore. And then I saw this:

Footprints in exchange for flotsam

Where did all those lines of debris go!? Out with the overnight tide. It had been what I've dubbed a "Scour Tide." Through the mystical mechanics of tide height, air temperature, wind, and wave energy, the ocean literally stripped back everything from the surface of the beach, like a natural Zamboni. Up and down the shore, all that remained was clean sand and footprints. Oh, and one piece of debris, far down at the water's edge:

A bone was thrown

It was a very short trip. There was, quite simply, almost nothing to see. I apologized to Mother Nature for believing I'd gotten the best of her. I know now: she always wins. Nonetheless, I had managed to collect a bit before the snows & scouring came. Here's Zone N:

71 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (chunk of asphalt, grooved wooden limb/leg)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 37 (rope bit, 2 trap bumpers, 3 monofilaments, 3 "rope guts", scrap of net, trap vent with net attached, long trap frame base (not collected, photo taken), 9 claw bands, 16 bits of lobster trap vinyl coating)
• Food-related plastics: 4 (2 cap seals, twist-tie, Bud Light label)
• Food-related metal/glass: 7 (4 can scraps, bottlecap, 2 sea glass)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 19 (inc. bag, J-hook, Johnson & Johnson cap, rubber ball scrap, Xmas tree scrap, vinyl upholstery scrap, brush scrap, hinged/hooked clear plastic thing, umbrella base, bead (?), balloon)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 2 (cord, small stamped leather scrap)

It's not all that was there, I know. But it's all I could do. Still, it tossed out a few head-scratchers.

J-hook pipe hanger

Brutalized plastic (I think!) brush end

Odd trap/net arrangement

(For more finds pictures, check out the Flotsam Diaries Facebook page.)

Zone S was... well, interrupted:

11 finds:

• Building materials: 0
• Foam/Styrofoam: 0
• Fishing misc.: 4 (1 monofilament with textile attached, 3 vinyl trap coatings)
• Food-related plastics: 1 (Heineken label)
• Food-related metal/glass: 2 (sharp bottle scraps)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 3 (rubber band, two tiny hard scraps)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 1 (scrap of leather)

Annoying. Still, from even this stunted "collection" there was one interesting item:

Monofilament fishing line w/
towel/shirt scrap attached?

And there we go. 82 finds from between Jan. 14 and Feb. 6. Sounds nice & low. Almost... "clean." But as the pictures show, it's all about the tides (and ice). What was there on Saturday was gone on Sunday. It may have been back Monday. I'll never know. What will be there when next I return? Nobody knows. All I know is, there will be something.

And probably, someone.

Like I've said, there is no off-season

Collection Report Dec 1-2, 2010

Welcome back to Bay View beach, Saco, Maine. December 1 was mild, mid-40s, but blustery. (In fact, a gust clocked at 41 mph.) Gray clouds were gathering, so I snuck in before the rains -- and the next high tide.

The flats at low tide

Remember the two tide lines & the berm of just one week before? All that stuff I thought I was figuring out about how the contour of the beach was changing? Well, do you see any of that in the picture below?

Me neither

Clearly I have a lot to learn about how wind & tide, current & rain really behave. Here's one thing I did discover. The winds buffeting me on Dec. 1 were largely from the SE; they were blowing in, fiercely at times, off the ocean. Pushing the tide unnaturally high, and blasting the heck out of the prior week's landscape.

At first I thought this meant another bumper crop of debris, fishing rope, boats, you name it. But it wasn't to be. Bay View had been assaulted by forces that can bury 3 feet of fishing rope without a thought.

What do you mean three feet?

Oh, that's what you mean.

It was dumb luck that I found that bit of rope. Most anything else? Blown away or buried deep. In the end, my trash bags were very light.

On December 2, I decided to take another quick swing by. The lay of the land looked much the same. The wind had raised foot-high sand drifts in places. And did other weird things.

Sand blows, but leaf doesn't blow?

When I spotted this leaf, I knew this week's collection would be hopeless. A light, dry leaf didn't blow away, but the sand did blow across and nearly cover it. WTH?

A short walk up Zones N & S proved I was right. Very little debris to be found. Not that it wasn't there, just that it couldn't be seen.

So, a collection of Zone N:

37 finds:

• Building materials: 3 (2 fence slats, 1 chunk of asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 6 (inc. a piece from the boat insulation)
• Fishing misc.: 8 (7 scraps of rope, 1 claw band)
• Food-related plastics: 2 (bottle caps)
• Food-related metal/glass: 4 (aluminum can, can scrap, 2 bits of sea glass)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 11 (3 scraps of packaging, 2 bits of grocery bags, 3 hard plastic scraps, 1 scrap of boundary tape, 1 tiny bit of balloon, 1 sm. red hard plastic bit)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 2 (scrap of fabric, freshly-lost tennis ball (dog toy?))

A bunch of usual suspects. Though, to be honest, 37 is more than I thought I'd collected. It doesn't take long to add up.

On to Zone S:

18 finds:

• Building materials: 2 (fence slat, chunk of asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 4
• Fishing misc.: 4 (shotgun shell wadding, 2 bits of rope, claw band)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 8 (bag scrap, green soldier, tampon applicator, bandaid, tie-band, clear scrap, green scrap, yellow scrap)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 0
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

Quick closeup of the small, but delightfully varied, non-food plastics:

Would be OK not finding another tampon applicator

So this week, I was well & truly schooled. Nov. 24-25 had put assumptions in my head that didn't last seven days. Which just proves that it might be a bit early for me to be making assumptions. Still, every idea that we get wrong gets us one step closer to getting it right.

Besides, I like a world that's full of surprises.

Collection Report Nov 17, 2010

A chilly and rainy week. But the clouds finally broke briefly in the early afternoon of November 17, so off to the beach I went.

Surf's up

The ocean was still all worked up from the various storm systems that had passed through. There were even whitecaps out on Eagle Island, a little spur of rock and grass 1 1/4 miles offshore.

A rare sight

So it was with some surprise (relief?) that this particular outing brought in a fairly small haul. Though, as always, a couple eye-openers. For one thing, if there had been any doubt before about the source of all the shotgun shells and wadding I'd been finding, this dispelled it.

What -won't- a barnacle grow on?

For another, Mother Nature had managed to cart up a curious 3ft x 2ft chunk of fiberglass.

Bathtub surround?

On to the report. First, Zone N:

35 finds:

• Building materials: 3
• Foam/Styrofoam: 12 (mostly the backing from the bathtub surround)
• Fishing misc.: 4 (2 bits of rope, 1 barnacle-encrusted shotgun shell, 1 buoy scrap)
• Food-related plastics: 8 (inc. freshly dropped chocolate milk bottle)
• Food-related metal/glass: 1 (beer bottle scrap)
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 3 (grocery bag scrap, bit of pink ribbon, bandaid)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 3 (2 local + 1 bit of plastic wrapper)
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 1 (fiberglass panel with foam backing)

Except for the fiberglass panel, a dull day in Zone N. Which is fine by me. Next, Zone S:

15 finds:

• Building materials: 3
• Foam/Styrofoam: 2
• Fishing misc.: 2 (buoy scrap and strand of rope/line)
• Food-related plastics: 5
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 2
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 1 (floater)
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 0

A grand total of 50 pieces of debris. First I thought, "Wow, that's great news." Then it struck me... A small stretch of 40-degree beach, almost deserted for a month, pelted & churned by rain, and I'm excited that only 50 pieces of trash were visible? How low have I set the bar?

Then again, it is nice to be able to spend a little time enjoying nature, rather than stooping down every few seconds. You see things you normally wouldn't. Like the way a tide line can smooth out the pockmarks of an autumn storm.

Look ma, no debris

Or the way a saturated shoreline creates its own network of rivulets that branch back toward the sea. Ever toward the sea.

A tree grows in Bay View

So. Is this what's in store for the many frosty weeks to come? Or was this clean beach an anomaly, a one-off? What will next week's collection report tell? Turn the page... But I will give you one hint. That bit of fiberglass? It wasn't from a bathtub surround.

Collection Report Oct 28, 2010

Wow. I'm getting behind here. Not cool. Quick catchup from a bright and unseasonably warm October 28.

My kind of busy

The high-tide line was not hard to spot. A fairly lazy high tide following a cold but mostly forgettable week. (Though a good shower the day before had churned things up nicely.)

Tell-tale kelp line

My stroll this day brought some things small:

Easy to spot when your eye is in

Some things not so small:

Huggies or Pampers? I didn't look that closely

Some things that look like other things:

Bag scrap masquerades as withered seagrass

Some head-scratchers:

Cap to a diner table syrup bottle? Really?

And some things that magically washed up as I ambled along the shoreline on the way back to my car:

Leather shoe sole, tossing in the surf

All told, an interesting haul. Here's Zone N:

54 finds:

• Building material: 3 (1 slat, 2 chunks of asphalt)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 12
• Fishing misc.: 4 (lobster trap bumper, rope, shotgun shell wadding, claw band)
• Food-related plastics: 5 (including label from a lemon)
• Food-related metal/glass: 6
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 12 (inc. grocery store bag, bag scrap, toy beach rake/fork, 2 bits of netting, diaper)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 8 (1 local, 6 floaters, 1 plastic cigar end)
• Paper/wood: 1
• Misc./unique: 3 (woven plastic sack, packaging from a present, lonely heart note)

This collection included one of the more poignant bits I've found - a note written to "Dear Universe," from a lonely heart looking for Mr. Right. When I found it, it was melting away from the rain. I saved it and brought it back home, which felt right at the time. Now I'm not so sure. Was that note an intrusion on the beach? Or was my taking it home an intrusion on somebody's heartfelt wish? All I know is, I hope her dream comes true.

An annoying find was the label from a lemon.

*Paramount Citrus, CA Lemon, USA 4958

Plastic. How can it be that now even every piece of fresh fruit at the supermarket is graced with it? Enough already? Then again, it has been a neat mystery for the past couple weeks -- who brought a lemon to the beach in 40-degree late October, and why?

Moving on to Zone S:

39 finds:

• Building material: 12 (5 fence slats, 1 thin post, 4 chunks of asphalt, 1 bit of brick, 1 bit burned painted wood)
• Foam/Styrofoam: 7 (inc. large chunk of buoy?)
• Fishing misc.: 4 (3 bits of rope, 1 bit of lobster trap coating)
• Food-related plastics: 0
• Food-related metal/glass: 0
• Non-food/unknown plastics: 6 (inc. syrup bottle lid, caution tag)
• Cigarette filters/plastics: 6 (2 local + 4 floaters)
• Paper/wood: 0
• Misc./unique: 4 (leather shoe sole, 3 pcs blue fabric)

The foot traffic of summer is gone; Zone N's numbers have stabilized well below the 200+ bits it had been giving. And it's interesting to see how Zones N & S now start looking so alike. Not surprising. But nice to see a hypothesis blossom: Yes, beachgoers leave a fearsome amount of trash; but the debris that fouls the coasts of southern Maine has a thousand fathers.

The other big thing to note is the recent collapse of cigarette debris. Of course there are fewer people on the beach, thus fewer smokers. But the ones that wash in at high-tide line with their paper worn off -- they're way down too. Why? Only one way to find out. Keep counting, and turn the page...