Observations from Rialto Beach and the International Coast Clean-up

McHenry relaxing at the post-cleanup barbecue hosted by the Surfrider Foundation

Its been a good long while since I've participated in a beach clean-up and actually cleaned the beach. For the past several years I've participated in the April Olympic Coast Clean-up (see this and this), for example, but since our registration station is up at the Three Rivers fire station, I sometimes don't even get to lay eyes on the beach for the whole event.

Christine and McHenry working the backshore at Rialto Beach, ONP

So it was a delight to actually get to work a beach for this past weekend's International Coast Clean-up, organized on the Olympic coast by Washington CoastSavers. Since my family was coming along, and we are distance-limited by our two young sons, we opted to head to Rialto Beach, which includes amongst its many positive attributes easy access. I knew from hanging out at Rialto Beach that it is generally not that "dirty", and anecdotal reports from the likes of Dr. Steve Fradkin (who spends a good bit of time on the beaches of Olympic National Park) suggested that it looked pretty clean. But I was still quite curious as to what we would find there. Additionally, the high tide during the clean-up forced us on to the upper beach and backshore and I was particularly interested in poking about in and around the vegetation line to see what we would find.

Our haul

In the end, after about 1.5 hours and covering about 1/2 mile, we walked off the beach with an estimated 2 kilos of debris, which I roughly estimated (based on the type of debris and its "look") to be half ocean-derived (i.e. floated on to the beach from elsewhere) and about half derived from visitors to the beach. To put it into the context of the debris "production" rate I estimated after the April 2012 Olympic Coast Clean-up for Rialto Beach, it is on the low end (coming out to about 2.2 pounds/person/mile).

By count, this was easily the most common debris type we found at Rialto...small, friable bits of styrofoam

We ended up spending most of our time cleaning the scattering of styrofoam on the upper beach. I've heard some express anxiety about the ecological impact that small, friable styrofoam chunks have on the intertidal ecosystem, but I've yet to really dig into the peer-reviewed literature addressing the topic directly (if you know of any references please send them my way). This beach clean-up session once more piqued my interest in that question.

Checking out the ocean during the beach clean-up