I haven’t heard about Plumb Beach before this class. However, once I realized that it was right off the belt parkway, I envisioned a beach full of plastic and other garbage lining the shore and sand.
Arriving at the site, I quickly identified numerous plastic bottles on the grass coming into the beach and was ready to see the rest of the plastic on the actual beach area.
We were split up into groups and were given an area of the sand to collect our plastic data. My are was from 40 – 60 meters (20×80 meters in all). We started a few feet away from the water until the gate that separated the beach from the grass and the highway. Originally my group and I walked perpendicular to the shoreline, but then we were told that the plastics from the ocean are parallel to the shore. Due to the different tide patterns, plastics accumulate in certain “hotspots.” This made is easier to make sure that most of the plastics and other garbage was collected and identified.
In class we mainly spoke about the plastic bottles and caps that accumulate by the shore. I was very shocked about some of the items that we found. Some of the categories of the data tally sheet were very strange and I couldn’t imagine that we would find them on the beach- but we did. We found everything on the list except for balloons. There were plenty of bottles and caps, plastic bags, and utensils. We also found personal care products such as makeup and nail polish brushes, a sandal, straws and other random plastic wrappers and toys.
When I really thought about where all this plastic came from, I realized that it wasn’t from people who came to relax at the beach. This plastic ( and there was a lot of it!) came from the ocean, meaning that somehow theses plastics ended up in the wrong place and polluted the oceans. They could have been in the ocean for months before they wound up on the shore.
It was really interesting to actually go out to the beach and see the plastics for myself. Now, when I read or hear about marine plastics, I will have a better understanding of where the plastics end up and how much plastic there really is in the shore line.
By: Brett Branco on November 11, 2014 at 2:51 am
It is pretty amazing to see what you can find as plastic debris on the beach. As I like to say, when you throw something “away”, it doesn’t disappear, it simply ends up somewhere else…often in places that are unexpected.