Our Daily Ocean: Day 92

For the second day in a row, we made it out to Wrightsville Beach.  This time to play, collect shells, and marvel at how much the beach has changed.  Claire and Henri were especially loving this new "balance beam" that Hurricane Irene installed at the beach ;)

As I mentioned in my last post, the wrack line is fairly overwhelming because it's full of litter that for the most part blends.  It takes a bit for my eyes to adjust... the colors are all the same... sometimes I think I'm grabbing litter and it's not... sometimes I probably miss litter.  Question:  Does this cigarette butt immediately pop out to you??  (Now imagine putting the photo on the floor and looking down...)

When I'm looking through the wrack line, I always think about the "Magic Eye" analogy that my friend Bonnie uses to describe plastics in the oceans:

"...the problem with plastics in our marine environment goes unnoticed because most of it is underwater or broken down into small bits floating on the surface. Not that it takes a trained eye to see it; you just have to recognize that it’s there. Once you do, it likens to the "Magic Eyes" from the 90s. Remember staring at a random series of blotches until an image imbedded in the blotches could be recognized? Once your eyes discovered it, you could always see it. And you wondered why you hadn't noticed at first glance."

20 minutes on August 28, 2011 at Access 42 

Litter by weight: 12.7 oz

Cigarette butts: 270

Total amount of cigarette butts removed from Wrightsville Beach, NC in 92 days:

28,025