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 - September 7, 2013

Saturday, September 7. 5:45PM. An hr before low tide. 70 degrees or so. A little rain over the previous week, but still nothing in the way of storms. Very much still a summer, calm weather pattern. And a shore that looked largely the same:

And a little bit different. For one thing, this day the beach reeked. The wraack on the low foreshore was starting to rip from its cobbles, die and rot. The runoff coming back down into the ocean had turned into a cloudy goo in places.

The mounds of cobbles & pebbles on the back of the low foreshore from August were still here. Along with some newly washed in bits & bobs. The back of the low foreshore up to the end of the algae was very flat. Then there was a noticeable lip as beach angled upward. Going up, the accumulation fell away quickly.

Thanks to the gentle summer waves, lots of vinyl ended again up at the southern end of my zone. Crazy lots:

Higher up on the bone-dry backshore,  offshore breezes blew the soft sand back off of the last bits of uncollected winter rope. That gave me a rope count for this week, even though no new rope came in. All told, another very busy day.

32 pcs of rope, about 20 ft total

744 pcs of nonrope debris

776 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 3
• Fishing rope/net: 32
• Fishing misc.: 662 (617 vinyl lobster trap coating scraps, 3 bumpers, 5 parts, bait bag, entrance ring, fishing line, 34 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 25 (2 bottle scraps, 2 bottlecap o-rings, 17 cup scraps, 2 bread tags, fork, plate scrap)
• Food-related glass/metal: 0
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 15 (2 bag scraps, cigarette, floss, bandaid, toy house roof pc, packaging, 2 cable ties, crate seal, 2 tubings, anchor, end cap, contact lens solution label scrap)
• Scrap plastics: 36 ( 14 > 1" , 22 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 3 (fabric piece, 2 sea glass)

It was a varied week. Lots of odd things across the spectrum. But really, there's still one story here:

Fix it, or drown in it. There are no other choices.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 7840
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1812
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4435

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 - Jan 11, 2013

Friday January 11, 12:55 PM, ~2 hrs before low tide. Gray and windy. Two weeks since last visit; lots of the same plus a little change. The wrack from Dec. 24 was still there, now smeared up and down the backshore. No new goop in the mix. It seems the past two weeks had been relatively low energy, just a reshuffling of the deck.

With the old seaweed spread about, more of its plastic load lay now on the surface. And it was fearsome. There are at least 9 pieces of plastics in this square foot:

And of course, the ubiquitous balloons.

Launched from miles -- or hundreds of miles -- away, to end up here.

It was a depressing week for plastic garbage. But I did see something kind of fun:

This is a slipper shell (a kind of snall) upside-down attached to a small stone. A seagull was lifting and dropping this stone over & over, trying to shatter the shell against the cobbles of the low foreshore. Except, this week there were no cobbles on the foreshore! December's storm reshaped the beach, burying the low ground under soft, fine sand. The gull, clearly used to a rocky shoreface, was doing what he always did in order to break open a shell. And he was clearly confused why it wasn't working!

Ecology in action.

I'll be interested to see how long it is before the sand washes back away and the shore is "healed" to its more usual form. In the meantime, this was a busy week of collection, especially for rope.

232 pcs of rope, about 550 ft total

203 pcs of nonrope debris

435 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 232 (~550 ft)
• Fishing misc.: 90 (49 vinyls, 6 bumpers, 4 trap tags, 14 bait bags, 4 trap mesh, 2 parts, 2 vents, 7 clawbands, shotgun shell, buoy handle)
• Food-related plastics: 32 (3 bottles, 3 bottlecap rings, 9 cup scraps, 10 tops/scraps, salad dressing packet, 6 straws)
• Food-related glass/metal: 4 (4 can scraps)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 42 (13 bags/scraps, 2 mylar balloons, latex balloon, balloon string, golfball, 10 cords/cable ties, big wingnut, 5 upholstery scraps, 4 pcs tape, crate seal, pen cap, Victorinox knife handle, tubing)
• Scrap plastics: 27 ( 10 > 1" , 17 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 8 (5 fabric pieces, 3 gloves)

Just a mess. No other word for it. So much that could be discussed, but I'll point out just one bit. All of this food-related debris originated somewhere else:

Whether a fishing boat, pleasure boat, beach up the road, seaside in Nova Scotia, or city drain in Portland. All from somewhere else, and most of its spent a long time in the ocean. Note the marine-life bite/poke marks on things like this remnant of red Solo cup:

Or this blue cheese salad dressing packet:

When your life is packaged in plastic, it never really goes away.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 12271
• Pcs fishing rope -- 3313
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4742

A Call to Service

Today in the US it's Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Crowds are already gathering in Washington, DC to hear the President's 2nd inaugural speech. Many around the nation have the day off thanks to the holiday celebrating the late civil rights leader.

A Washington, DC Tweeter snapped and posted this image at a DC intersection:

And it just had me wondering...

Today we celebrate two huge things. First, the fundamental idea of democracy, freedom -- the idea that a people can and should have the liberty and rights and responsibility to rule itself.

Second, we celebrate the memory of a man who gave his life for the idea of justice for all people. His call to service helped lift our national discussion about who we are and what we can be.

We grow up being taught that freedom isn't free. That service to each other and to our nation is a noble goal. An essential goal.

And yet on this day, where those ideals are front and center, we can't even be bothered to crush our used single-use coffee cups so that they take up less room in the trash can. (Or in the recycling bin, where they actually don't belong in the first place.)

It seems to me, there is much work still to do if we're going to become what we say we want to be.

Bookends

Two pieces of environmental news moved me the most this past year. Serendipitously, one occurred as the year began, the other as it ended.

In January, I came across an astonishing photo in a travelogue blog of Kuta Beach, Bali:

Source: http://www.changesinlongitude.com/
kuta-beach-bali-trash/

Bali, paradise on Earth, has no infrastructure for dealing with its resorts' tonnage of plastic waste. That waste just gets pitched into the sea, as has been traditional on Bali for centuries. Unfortunately, now it comes back. Worse, it's accepted. The sunbather in this picture -- for her, the fight already seems lost. Her world is one of waste & filth, and she nestles down amid it, to enjoy what she can of her surroundings.

The second "bookend" to my year came just a few days ago. A story I stumbled upon about an extremely rare gingko-toothed beaked whale that washed up in the Philippines.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/pages/D-Bone-
Collector-Museum-Inc/216407245052538

This whale is so rare that in the past 55 years precisely two have been spotted in the Philippines. Including this one. It died from a ~6-foot piece of plastic fishing rope lodged in its digestive tract. (Series of photos here; some of the necropsy. Fascinating but graphic, use discretion.) Basically, it starved.

It's all the same problem: connecting our actions on one day & place with outcomes that may be far away & a long time coming. Deluging developing nations with plastic products... A global fishing industry that loses countless tons of plastic gear daily... These actions have consequences, costs. And we're not paying them.

We're still just running up the environmental credit card. It will come due.

---

The Flotsam Diaries is often a study in manmade ugliness. And it's true, humans, alone in the world, have the capacity to utterly wreck our planet.

But, as far as we know, we are also the only ones who can appreciate that planet. No other creature sits on a lawn and admires the pinks and violets of an incredible sunset, for its own sake. No other species will visit a vacant seashore, sands sun-sparkled and smooth -- freshly washed by an outgoing tide -- and see it not in terms of threats or opportunities of the moment, but in awe. Only we can ponder footsteps of the past, and of the future, and truly know something of our place in this tiny moment of time & space that we each call ours.

So in spite of the ugliness, the Flotsam Diaries continues joyfully into 2013. Because the world is still a beautiful place, worth fighting for. And folks the world over know it.

Peace, and humble appreciation for all of your support and passion and kind words over the years.

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 - 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