Delving Deep into Maritime Trash: An Intimate Exploration of Ocean Pollution

Traveling Down the Coast and Discovering Ocean Waste

This summer, my family and I embarked on a journey to the Oregon coast and worked our way up through the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. We had high expectations for beautiful beaches, breathtaking viewpoints, and lush rainforests, but we didn't anticipate getting up close and personal with carefully curated ocean trash.

In Forks, Washington, we paid a visit to John's Beachcombing Museum, a place that houses four decades of beachcombing finds from the local area and beyond. John's mountainous stacks of reclaimed buoys and floats were captivating, and the uniqueness of some items – like a whole binder of letters in bottles, assorted whale bones, and countless glass fishing floats – was mesmerizing. I'd highly recommend a visit if you're in the neighborhood. It's a total blast for the kiddos, too – definitely a must-add to the budget-friendly fun activities list!

Yet, the museum visit left me pondering the reality and shocking volume of items collected from multiple local beaches.

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The Nitty-Gritty on theFinds

Occasionally, it's possible to spot a contrast between earlier and later-manufactured items, making for an interesting perspective on how materials have evolved over time. For example, the beautiful glass fishing floats that were popular from the early 1900s to the 1960s have become increasingly rare finds, surfacing only about three times a year. In contrast, plastic floats pour out of the water in such large quantities that they're used to create towering displays like the ones you can see below. Instead of harmless, smoothed beach glass and decomposed natural rope, the remnants of plastic foam floats remain in the ocean, slowly breaking down and causing harm to the ecosystems they come into contact with – unless, of course, they end up in one of John's fantastic exhibits!

The Ocean’s Network

The museum features an exhibit dedicated to items retrieved from local beaches as a result of the 2011 tsunami originating in Japan. Remarkably, there's an entire motorbike in the museum that was pulled from the beach! Other items included toys, tires, boots, and an assortment of miscellaneous objects. John was a part of a project where items were traced and returned to owners in Japan, emphasizing the ocean's ability to link us all.

This demonstrates clearly that what we do in our local areas directly impacts the ecosystems around us and our neighbors near and far. In fact, according to NOAA, around 80% of ocean waste actually originates on land.

A Glance at the Overwhelming Scale

The sheer number of items that John and his family and friends have fished from local beaches over the years provides a small yet unsettling glimpse into the immense quantity of junk that must be plaguing our oceans.

Viewing the beachcombed treasures on display made the scale of the issue feel much more tangible than statistics in a report or images on a screen. Seeing and sharing space with the items flowing through the currents of our seas had a significant impact and made me even more concerned for the future of marine ecosystems and the creatures that depend on them.

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*1. The plastic floats, which now pour out of the water in large quantities, are a stark reminder of the devastating impact of climate-change on our natural environment and the subsequent increase in ocean waste.2. To truly understand the overwhelming scale of ocean waste, a visit to John's Beachcombing Museum offers a unique perspective, as it displays an accumulation of items that have been carefully curated from multiple local beaches over the years.3. The items on display at John's Beachcombing Museum, including plastic floats and remnants from the 2011 tsunami, underscore the importance of environmental-science and lifestyle choices to address climate-change and protect our ecosystems, not just in our local communities, but worldwide.