Curtis Cove Report - Oct 11, 2012

Thursday October 11. 1:30PM. 55 degrees, bright skies, mild gusts. A real autumn feel.

This was another beautiful day. The Little River marsh behind the cove was awash in rust & ochre:

On the beach, the power of the ocean had pulled down a lot of older sand, revealing once-buried rope chunks. It also carved out nice cliffs amid the high sands and wrack:

Meanwhile, down at the muddy lip where the low-tide ripples lapped the shore, otherworldly tubeworm "condos" stood proudly:

In the end, this was a very "unsorted" day. Masses of cobbles and pebbles came up high. Masses of sand, mud, and wrack slumped down. The ocean rearranged its coastal furniture quite a bit. So what would that mean for the collection?

26 pcs of rope, about 60 ft total

57 pcs of nonrope debris

87 finds:

• Bldg material/furniture: 0
• Foam/styrofoam: 0
• Fishing rope/net: 26
• Fishing misc.: 34 (20 vinyl trap scraps, bait bag, 8 trap parts, trap tag, 4 claw bands)
• Food-related plastics: 8 (bottle - old & scoured, bottlecap, 5 cup scraps, straw - old & brittle)
• Food-related glass/metal: 6 (2 can scraps, 4 sea glass)
• Nonfood/unknown plastics: 9 (bag scrap, 3 cable ties, bucket rim, flower tag, circular base, rubberband, air filter scrap)
• Scrap plastics: 4 (3 > 1" , 1 < 1" )
• Paper/wood: 0
• Non-plastic misc./unique: 0

In the end, not a huge haul. With much of the lighter sand and wrack pulled back downshore, probably the light & bouncy plastics went back to the sea. What was left behind was mostly larger and bulkier than usual. Sizable chunks of rusty trap, bigger scraps of broken plastics, heavy seaglass -- even the vinyl trap scraps tended to be larger than usual.

More sobering, look closer.

Om, nom, nom

The synthetic (read: plastic) fiber swatch on the left has been chewed and bored by various denizens of the deep. The hard piece of styrene on the right has been poked by many teeth/beaks, and ripped & torn by others.

Plastic seas feeding plasticized fish. This isn't science fiction. It's not some dystopian future. It's now. In the beautiful state of Maine.

Running YTD counts:

• Total pcs of litter -- 9623
• Pcs fishing rope -- 1977
• Vinyl lobster-trap scraps -- 4442