Dozing polar bear, Indianapolis Zoo

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Pellet Report


It took us less than thirty seconds to find the first pellet. It was there, like the others, on Moolack Beach amid seaweed, dessicated crab legs, errant shorebird feathers and lots and lots of plastic crap.

These are pre-production plastic pieces (five times fast?), and only 2-3 millimeters wide, so they can be difficult to see. As instructed, we picked them up with stainless steel tweezers, and placed them carefully in a pouch we'd formed from aluminum foil. We brought them back home, where they posed for this photograph. They will soon be winging their way to Japan for analysis. Wanna play? Go here.

The nasty yellow ones supposedly contain the highest concentrations of PCB. Yippee. The big blue one looked right on the beach, but I think I'll remove it -- I suspect its just a random chunk of plastic amongst the pellets.

I had salmon for dinner.

10 comments:

A Lewis said...

Salmon? I don't think I'll ever eat anything else from the water (as if I do now....veggie man here).

kris said...

Wow - our little inland lake doesn't have this stuff - just gas & oil - lol. I'm thinking the hazard to eating fish caught here is the mercury levels - but we hear about pcb's, of course, because our good fish comes from either coast.

Your friend OZ sounds like a good friend - and how cool for your son to have an international friend at his age. We have a friend from the UK who Mark did business with - I'm always fascinated at how he and others from Europe look at our country and world events - we live in a little cocoon here. Not a good thing, I'm thinking.

Also - thanks for catching the W-S - I read your comment and bells went off - oops, typed that in wrong. duh

kris said...

My son who lives in Seattle is going to Shanghai next month - his first trip there. Wouldn't it be cool if he found his own OZ? I hope he does.

Trailhead said...

What? Did you type something wrong in your post? What did I write?

kris said...

Minor, trust me - I put Williams & Sonoma - you correctly typed Williams-Sonoma. I gave you credit for the gentle correction!!! In the scope of all my misspellings etc, not a biggie! (I think this is a case of me making mountain out of molehill - lol)

Trailhead said...

Ha! I didn't even notice when I read your post.

Anonymous said...

I think first what would really stop pollution, maybe it is different on the West coast, is if we really really fined people for Gargage!

I mean I stroll along Lake Michican and there are diapers, DIAPERS! beer bottles plastic bags and all sorts of stuff that finds it's way into the lake. I certainly would never eat one of our Mutated catfish.

I remember swimming one day ( alwasy have to shower after a nasty swim) and there was something shiny in the water. It ended up being a broken beer bottle standing upright! Someone could have sliced their foot open if I didn't find it. And the thing is there are recycle cans everywere! It really T's me off!

But maybe it is different along the coast. People seem to be a little more enviroment friendly than here. Here the motto is "Let someone else clean it up."

I do wonder as far as the west coast is concerned what is being done about this

http://www.oceanlight.com/spotlight.php?img=00958

This horrified me. They're getting these cuts around the neck from something that wraps around their neck and then they grow into it. I am wondering if rescue teams are going around helping these sea lions? Do you know how exactly this happens?

Toots

Anonymous said...

OK Maybe I should try spell check 1st

I meand Garbage

Trailhead said...

Argh, Toots, that linked pic is wrenching. But thanks for sharing it, because it's reality.

I'll try to look into the issue though, because it's interesting. Thanks for bringing it up.

Which Lake Michigan beach do you find has the most trash?

Anonymous said...

The beaches by Rodgers Park, I'm up north. It's interesting because you tell people when out of town that you’re from Chicago and the only part they know of is Downtown, like the Sears tower, Water tower and such. Chicago is a big city.

Foster beach, if I could remember was OK, I use to go there when I lived in that area, and Laurence beach was just a pig sty, infested with garbage everywhere. It's ridiculous! I say Fine someone $500 if you see them drop a diaper anywhere else but a trash can and this sort of behavior will stop! $900 for a broken bottle in the water! $250 for a plastic bag in the water, and such. I should submit this to Mr. Daily but he's a shyster anyway.

But Chicago has almost impossible Recycling techniques. They use to do this thing where you could just leave your recycles in a blue bag or blue bin, by the garbage and they would pick it up but they quit that. I take my cans and glass to work and recycle them there. So today on Monday I walked in with my garbage.

If you do find out more about those poor little sea lions please post it. I would like to know if there are rescue teams going around to take that stuff off of their neck so those nasty wounds can heal. Isn’t that just shocking?

Toots

Oh speaking of Toots he is out of his funk and back on my lap purrrrrring. And giving little kitty kisses. He like rubs his nose on my lips and purr or do this thing that kind of sounds like a bird. Also people are making me seem like an animal abuser because I haven’t gotten him another cat yet but I don’t know how my allergies could handle two cats. I wanted to at least wait till April for shedding season to really see how it is. I hope he can live a happy life with just us.