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NSPN/Salem Sound Coastwatch Island Cleanup 9/25/21


Joseph Berkovitz

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Yesterday's event of Sept. 25, 2021 was an exciting first! NSPN and Salem Sound Coastwatch collaborated on organizing a cleanup of town-owned islands in Salem Sound including Coney Island, North Gooseberry Island and South Gooseberry Island. The cleanup was huge fun and, while the volume of garbage was not so huge, we collected valuable data using the Ocean Conservancy's Clean Swell app. For now, at least, you can visit these islands and see nary a plastic bottle or beverage can. (We did not collect fishing gear due to legal and safety concerns.)

The cleanup was originally conceived by myself and Bob Levine before the season began, when we were watching someone pick up trash at Nahant one day. Who better than sea kayakers to clean up a bunch of islands? We had the idea to involve Salem Sound Coastwatch and make the most of both organizations' visibility and connections to the community. Things moved rapidly forward from there. At first we thought we would transfer bags and large objects to a waiting power boat, but the logistics of this were complex and very conditions-dependent. The eventual plan involved paddlers picking up, bagging trash, and stowing the bags in their kayaks, with large objects to be optionally placed in a pack raft and towed back to shore.

Our trash collection odyssey began at 10 am on Marblehead's Riverhead Beach with a team including: myself, Bob Levine, Prudence Baxter, Janet Lorang, Don Martin, Mike Habich, Ricardo Caivano, Pat Donohue, Shari Galant, Beth Sangree, Nick Pearson and Rich Zwiercan.

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From Riverhead, we headed out to Childrens Island. There was virtually no wind but once in open water, it was obvious that some long 2-foot swells were moving around. Beautiful conditions to paddle in:

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We went through the gut at Childrens/Cormorant and crossed to South Gooseberry. Once there, it became apparent that landing while perfectly feasible was still not trivial, as swells were wrapping completely around the island and impacting the typically more sheltered inside of the gravel shoal that tails off the island. A quick recon revealed that the outside of the gravel beach was actually a better and more predictable landing zone, with a lot of swash but little breaking action. About half the group landed, while others waited offshore — I had all the garbage bags and it was awkward to split off a separate party until the South Goose effort had gotten going. Also, I wanted to make sure the Clean Swell app was working properly and that we had a reasonable process for gathering up the trash.

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The general run of things was that a few "data loggers" had the tracking app installed on their smartphones and responsibility for counting the numbers of trash types by tapping buttons in the app. Others played the roles of trash picker-uppers or bag-holders, and called out each batch of found objects to the data-loggers who confirmed by repeating it back, kind of like cooks working in a short-order grill. It seemed to work.

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South Gooseberry is mostly washed over except for its high ground where there was not so much trash, so I left the island and along with the waiting paddlers we headed over to North Gooseberry, where there was 2-3 times as much land area and perhaps 2-3 times as much garbage. We landed and, while working, we could easily see the S. Goose team, who soon finished and launched into the rising waters to come over and meet us. By the time they had fully launched and landed on N. Goose, the North team had finished collecting beach trash and it was time for lunch. No, lunch did not solely consist of chocolate, but it did include chocolate:

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We decided not to use Beth's pack raft in the end as conditions were fairly rough and we did not really have that many large objects to potentially haul away. Post lunch we headed off to Coney Island via the tip of Eagle Island. Along the way, some tasty trash was collected from the water too by some highly motivated volunteers:

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Coney was our last stop, and it probably had the most stuff including a rough shelter built from a now-rotted tarp and scrap lumber, which Bob helped to dispatch:

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By the time Coney was done, we were running a bit late and we straggled back to Riverhead. The group became a bit spread out. At the end, we were able to pile up our treasure on the beach for one final garbagey goodbye:

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Home it went with us, fanning out to our various household garbage bins. It was great fun and a beautiful paddle besides. We're already plotting to do this again next year!

[Thank you to Prudence and Don Martin for the photographs]

 

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