MOOP, The Beach, and Thoughts with music

Dad · Post by **Dad** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:54 pm

Finally walked my favorite beach after these storms. Not much traffic. The great sight of a grandpa and grandson was about it. Found some great rocks. Yeah, that is my love. Surprising walk back as I searched the beach and occasionally looked up and found that amazing thing we all call MOOP. Damn I was surprised. Other than a great power ranger figure with all paint off the face I was surprised. 1st time in 6 years I truly needed a bag. Hands hurt carrying all the plastic back down the beach. I get the lost kids sand screen torn apart but was amazed at the rest of it. Pieces of bags, most destroyed and sun wrecked bottles, little pieces of plastic, I mean the ones the sun killed and are so brittle, yet enough I barely could carry it all. So amazing and sad. Wonder about that so called trash pile in the Pacific. I have surely found Japanese soda bottles yet this was the little pieces. Was sad to me. Picked up the usual beer can or 2 and even a pack of smokes, yet disturbed by the plastic thing. I have always picked for the beach glass and wonder if the plastic will become sand as the glass does.

So with all this worrying and feeling good about picking up others MOOP, I did a piece tonight that I am sure is influenced by my worry of what I saw and picked up today. Just a freak thing I want to share with you all. Has a bit of what I tried to get as Tibetan horns and worry as well about that country. Really sharing my mood, thoughts, and concerns with you all and maybe a few, just a few can feel it through my music.

Dad

Song is "I Don't Know" and wonder why so few don't get it. Clean up your mess world. I am tired of doing it for you. (I hope, and am sure, I am not telling most of you that would read this)
http://www.reverbnation.com/patguerre

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Fri Feb 12, 2010 9:50 am

I hate that garbage patch as well.
Plastic is not likely to become sand in the same way glass does. Glass is silica, plastic is not. What happens to the softer plastice seems to be its break-down into very small pieces (vsp) and absorbtion into the food chain. I don't know what happens with the harder stuff--i.e. that stuff that is used for auto break light lenses.

But oh, beachcombing. Okay, I'm playing with assemblage... I'd love to be able to get hold of good drift wood or oceanified power rangers...

Dad · Post by **Dad** » Mon Feb 22, 2010 4:35 pm

So today was another great long walk on the beach. Hate the fact my favorite stairs are gone and maks for a much longer walk. Today brought the trash bag and found another great bit of trash. Again that old nearly brittle plastic. I am getting to hate plastics in a huge way. Great workout though as I found an extremely old beat up white wall tire full of sand washed up and carried it nearly a mile in soft sand and up the stairs. This world is not a trash can and it so frustrates me. Keep the world clean people.

rodiponer · Post by **rodiponer** » Tue Feb 23, 2010 11:30 pm

I am also sad about the giant floating plastic thing. Some day I want to sail to it and see it, first hand.

Have you guys ever driven down Baja California? The parts of Highway 1 where thousands of plastic bags are stuck to the cactuses like tattered white flags? It looks like a garbage dumps was hit by a hurricane, and the plastic bags blew across the desert until they were caught and impaled on the spines of a cactus. The rest, I guess, went out to sea.

I'd like to think is how the floating plastic ball was formed, and not by intentional dumping. I am not sure what difference it makes, except that it may mean our nature is more stupid than mean.

And walking the beach.... You would not believe how much stuff collects on deserted islands. When there has never been anyone to pick it up, the stuff that collects over the years is amazing. Those basketball sized glass ball things, light bulbs that are still intact, batteries that float (?), sandals, fishing rope... It's especially amazing to me because these places are so far away from anything else, several hundred miles or more from the nearest little pocket of tiny civilization.

But what gives me hope is how much nature rebounds in places that humans have abandoned. How many birds or hermit crabs or lizards or whatever there are when there are not people around. Some places you have to walk carefully because the ground is crawling with so many little critters or filled with nests.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Wed Feb 24, 2010 6:05 am

I'd bet, most of the plastic in the pacific, is from intentional dumping from Asia.......and, from shipping. It was, and may still be, standard practice to clean cargo ships at sea.

Dad · Post by **Dad** » Wed Feb 24, 2010 4:25 pm

ygmir wrote:I'd bet, most of the plastic in the pacific, is from intentional dumping from Asia.......and, from shipping. It was, and may still be, standard practice to clean cargo ships at sea.

Best one I found was a clear not familiar shaped plastic bottle with a bit of lettering left on the cap. Turned out, after a bit of research, to be a soda bottle from the Asahi beverage company in Japan. I thought they only brewed beer but turns out the largest soda manufacturer in Japan.