KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
If you’ve ever walked Kodiak beaches you’ve no doubt come upon some interesting things.
The things a person collects from the beaches are kind of like people in Kodiak. Some are really interesting, some not so much. Some are new arrivals or come from nearby. Others have been around a long time or have come from far away.
KMXT’s Maggie Wall has this report on the stuff that loiters in the tide lines.
— (Beach Collections 4:13 SOC)
There’s a lot of interesting things on our local beaches. Some natural, some man made. Some really cool stuff, and some just plain old trash.
Andy Schroeder sees a lot of Kodiak beaches in his role as executive director of Island Trails Network:
–(( You find all kinds of things on Kodiak beaches))
Sometimes you will know of an incident that put items into the sea-that give you the date and position of the start of the item’s ocean adventure:
-(( Floatees, duck, frogs, beavers, turtles))
This particular spill of plastic toys – known as flotees – took place in 1992 when a van full of floating bath toys spilled into the Pacific Ocean near the International Date Line. Exactly 28,800 of the little flotees according to the report in Wikipedia. Ten months later, they started showing up on beaches in Sitka.
That many nearly identical items released at the same time offered ocean researchers a bonanza of data on ocean currents. It’s the case that is often cited, though Schroeder says there are other known debris spills:
-(( The Hockey Glove Spill))
Schroeder says there isn’t one "best" time to go beach combing, and don’t hesitate to go up the shore a bit and check out stuff that may have ended up in the grass. He says generally northeasterly storms bear down on Kodiak beaches.
As for the best things to collect-well that’s up to the collector. You could go for the natural like floating pumice stones, skate egg casings or other beachey things.
Or maybe you’d prefer the human related oddities like glass balls or plastic floats from fishing nets.
-((Favorite find is a green flotee frog))
Hmmm…maybe some future walk on the beach will lead you to find your destiny…or just something cool to sit on your windowsill.
I’m Maggie Wall.
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