Chapter 3 Litter Accumulation on Racing Beach, MA
One Beach’s Trash is Another Person’s Research Project
Arielle Drisko
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Chapter 3 Litter Accumulation on Racing Beach, MA
One Beach’s Trash is Another Person’s Research Project
Arielle Drisko
Man has been disrupting the oceans ecosystems for decades. Plastic in particular can be
devastating to any marine environment. I hypothesized that the majority of litter found on Racing
Beach would be plastic. Racing Beach in Falmouth Massachusetts appears to be a very clean
beach, however this is not the case. There are plastics, pieces of rope, candy wrappers, and glass
scattered about the beach. Most of the litter was found on the north end near the Jetty. This was
expected because the long shore current goes from south to north, and the current sweeps the
litter north, where it gets caught in the rocky area. Plastics were most abundant, though the
sheer amount was surprising. The litter most likely comes from a southern beach, or fishing boats
because of the direction of the current. Also since it is a private beach in spring, not very much of
the litter looked as if it was dropped there. For future work, I would recommend a more
quantitative study.
Introduction:
This study will look at the amount and types of debris that is washed up from the ocean
on Racing Beach. A long shore current is a movement of water parallel to a shoreline and
it tends to occur on long stretches of straight beach1. Davis2 states that the shore current, a
wind driven current, does not have the power to carry detritus along a beach. However,
the long shore current, which moves parallel to the water margin, is capable of carrying
particles and detritus long distances. Brenda Ekwerzel3 goes into detail about the short
cycles of erosion of the beach as well as the historical shoreline changes of bayside
beaches on Cape Cod. She studied sand movement and found that Herring Cove Beach
was atypical in that the long shore current swept and deposited sand from the ocean side
beaches to Herring Cove Beach. Thus, it was less vulnerable to erosion. Todor and
Williams4 devised a new classification system, for litter collected on a beach that
accounted for the source of the material. They separated items into seven categories.
Abe5 looked at different kinds of detritus, and how the wind and waves affected
where it washed up. The procedure was very simple. She went down to the beach and
collected detritus and identified them. She paid attention to the area high and low tide
lines. Her findings were that she could see three lines of detritus, along the rocky area,
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but only one line near Racing Beach Ave. This supports the long shore current
hypothesis. She also found that there is less detritus after low tide, and as the tide comes
in, more things wash up. After high tide, the detritus would be dragged off again.
Selzer6 looked into where different kinds of “wash ups” came from. After they
collected debris, they then identified, analyzed, and categorized it. They found some dead
marine organisms, including clams, mussels, crabs and snails, as well as a raccoon
carcass, living insects and plastics, flotation devices, and building materials. Another
student was particularly interested in the location and movement of debris on the beach
and concluded that a large portion of the trash was coming from off shore. One of the
important observations was that the raccoon carcass moved slowly from the sandy end of
the beach to the rocky end, confirming the long shore current.
The amount and types of detritus that wash up on Racing Beach will be analyzed.
As well as the location on Racing Beach where the most litter washes up. The long shore
current that runs southwest to northeast will transport the litter mostly to the northern end
of the beach, and that the most abundant type of litter will be plastic. This study is
important because the location of the litter shows where the impact of the current. The
current also influences the distribution of nutrients, therefore affecting the surrounding
plants and animals. The litter will be collected and the GPS point recorded for each item
as well as the type of item. More litter will wash up near the northern end, and that most
of the litter will be types of plastic.
Materials and Methods:
Each day a wind speed meter will be used to take the wind speed, and direction.
Racing Beach was walked from Racing Beach Ave in a zigzag pattern towards the jetty.
Litter was picked up with non-latex gloves and placed in a black trash bag. The litter
location will be noted by GPS and recorded. This was continued until the cement cylinder
near the jetty was reached.
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Results:
Figure 1:
The most litter was found on day 3 and significantly less on day 5. Day 4 is out of order
because small section of the beach could be monitored.
Figure 2:
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Plastic was the most common type of litter found, followed by rope and glass. Animals,
metal and paper had the lowest totals.
Figure 3:
Glass findings were much higher on day 3 and day 5 than they were on day 2.
Plastic was overall the most abundant, and the amount collected declined each day. The
amount of rope declined rapidly each day.
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Figure 4:
Day 2 and 3 have relatively the same distribution of litter while day 5 is generally
a little bit lower down.
Figure 5:
Glass was generally found lower on the beach than all other types of litter.
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Discussion:
On Racing Beach, MA there is a long shore current that flows from south to
north. On first glance, the beach appears to be very clean. Barely any litter is visible, and
even on a casual walk, a small amount of litter is spotted. However this is not entirely the
case. Upon further inspection the amount of litter is very surprising.
It was interesting that day 3 had the most, because day 2 was the day that no
previous litter had been picked up (Figure 1). It does however make sense that day 5 has
less litter because it had been picked up on prior days. What this graph does not show is
the volume of litter on each day. Just judging by the approximate size of each trash bag,
day 2 had larger pieces of litter than any of the other days.
Figure 2 and 3 show that plastic was the most abundant type of litter found. This
was not surprising, and supported the hypothesis that most, if not all, of the litter came
from offshore. This can be concluded because the time of year that this study took place
was before the summer, and before most people were using the beach. The rope most
likely came from off shore fishing boats. Much of the glass was beach glass, only a small
portion was full glass bottles.
Most of the litter was found near the northern end of the beach close to the jetty
(Figure 4) as predicted. This makes sense because the litter is likely to be swept in that
direction by the long shore current, and then get caught in the rocks. The litter inside of
the jetty was very abundant, but was not counted as part of this study.
Figure 5 shows that the glass pieces were lower on the shore than most other
kinds of litter, where small pebbles were most common. It could be that the small pieces
of glass behave similar to pebbles because they have a similar mass and shape.
It is possible that pieces of litter were missed, but on the whole there were few
sources of error. It is important to quantify more accurately much litter washes up each
day. This could be done by spending two or three days completely clearing the beach of
all litter and then seeing what washes up. It might also be interesting to count all the litter
in the wall. Litter is a major problem in our oceans, and tracking how much washes up
can help us track how much damage we are doing to the earth as well as tell us something
about the ecosystem on Racing Beach.
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References:
The Ecology of Atlantic Shorelines, Edition 1, Sinauer Associates Inc. 28-30. Mark D.
Bertness. 1998.
Davis, W. M. (1900). CURRENT NOTES OX PHYSIOGRAPHTY SHORELINE
TOPOGRAPHY. Science Vol. XI. No. 281, 790-791.
Ekwerzel, Brenda (1990). A Complex Bayside Beach: Herring Cove, Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, USA. Journal of Costal Research Vol. 6 No. 4, 879-891.
Tudor, David, Williams, Allan T. (2004) Development of a ‘Matrix Scoring Technique’
to determine litter sources at a Bristol Channel beach. Journal of Costal Conservation
Vol. 10 No. ½, 119-127.
Abe, Chie. (1994). Detritus and Animals of Sandy Intertidal. CSW Marine Biology.
Selzer, Casey. (1998) In the Study of Pollution and Animals Washed up on Racing
Beach. CSW Marine Biology Ch. 8.
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