interest feel that in someway you may have been neglected. Well, it was not intentional and I would encourage and challenge you to revise this equation to suit your own geographical, local, cultural, and environmental interests and problems. In conclusion, I am now going to show a series of slides made available to me by special arrangement which shows eastern North Carolina in 2007. The first set shows eastern North Carolina as it will appear if we are successful in balancing the equation which I have just described to you. The second set shows the level of degradation which can occur, aesthetically, commercially, and culturally, in the event that we do not successfully implement this equation. It is naturally my hope that the set which represents our successful efforts to arrive at multiple use of the estuarine system of eastern North Carolina will be the one which my children and grandchildren will be privileged to see and love. thank you. Dr. John D. Costlow, Jr. is Director of Duke University Marine Laboratory. He obtained his A.A. from Towson State College in 1948; his B.S. from Western Maryland College in 1950; and his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1956. Debr:ls and Litter on a South Texas Gulf Beach: A Long-Term Study Mr. Anthony F. Amos University of Texas Little did I think when I first drove along the beach of Mustang Island, Texas in 1976, that ten years later I would be making this presentation about litter and debris on the beaches. Driving is permitted on Texas' beaches, so I found a 7-1/2 mile stretch of Gulf beach on Mustang Island where I could pursue my lifelong hobby of observing birds. Shortly after starting this study, on a casual basis, several events occurred which gave it impetus and eventually turned· it into a full­fledged research program with many facets. The first was the Ixtoc oil spill in 1979. I found that I had the only clata that existed on how many birds, particularly shorebirds, were oiled or not oiled prior to that spill, enabling comparison of pre­and post-spill oiling of shorebirds. In 1980 came Hurricane Allen which dramatically altered the face of the beach. When the study was started in 1978, there were no structures on this stretch of beachfront where there are now 22 condominiums and other buildings. The beachfront' s growing development was another factor that influenced my decision to increase the number of things looked at on this survey. Next came the red fish kill in 1981 that still remains a mystery that some think was conspiratorial and others blame on everything from industry to natural events. In 1983 a big freeze killed vast numbers of fish. The most recent event is the red tide which still lingers--another natural phenomenon that affected not only the fish but the entire coastal community. The count now includes birds, people, cars, dogs, helicopters, other things felt to be disturbing influences, measurement of beach widths, sea conditions, weather, as well as documentation of the continuing development of the beachfront represented by the construction of condominium complexes. One aspect of increased human usage of the beach is that more 11tter and debris seemed to be left on the beach. The litter and debris is categorized by presumed source as "beachgoing" and "offshore". Beachgoing litter is that material left there by visitors to the beach, while offshore litter and debris washes in from the sea and is left there by the receding tide. Three years ago, tired of not really knowing whether this material was as bad now as it was in "the old days", I started estimating amounts of several kinds of debris and litter. Conducting this study and living virtually on the beach is proving an excellent way to gain an understanding of the natural processes and resources of a barrier island beach and a small coastal community that attempts to make its living from promoting such things as tourism and fishing, and the impact of these activities on the beach. I drive a 7-1 /2 mile stretch of Mustang Island Gulf beach every other day and have now completed over 1,300 of these trips. In addition to counting birds and people, etc., I "map" their positions along the shoreline. The beach curvature aids in locating the position of things of interest. The vehicle has a sort of Loran-c navigation system. Using a polynomial fitted to the curvature of the coastline and the vehicle's odometer reading, latitude and longitude are determined as a function of distance from an access road. The survey, started with a clipboard on the steering wheel, now uses a Hewlett-Packard 75C computer. a sensor connected to the truck's transmission inputs distance and time automatically. The computer's keyboard is reconfigured to enter species of birds. and other survey items, including large litter and debris i terns. While the prime motivation for this study is actually not beach litter, it is this aspect of it which has gained some public interest. My slides highlight several aspects of this beach, including the litter problem. Many activities impact the beach, from shrimping and fishing to the operations of the oil industry. With the slump in the oil industry many of the structures and vessels that were used offshore are parked in our waterways and safety anchorages. The beach undergoes a remarkable change in morphology, from a very wide, clean beach in January, when sea level is generally low and the passage of weather fronts ("northers") push water, debris and litter offshore, to times when there is no beach at all. The action of wind during "northers" sweeping down off the plains at almost weekly intervals during the fall, winter and spring, blows sand out to sea. The rapidity with which erosion takes place is impressive; a storm erodes within minutes a great deal of the beach. During the summer, when there is a low energy period, the back beach area begins every year to support vegetation. However, the policy of allowing vehicles on the beach means this vegetation seldom is able to establish itself because vehicles drive on the shoreward side of the mid-beach area. An amazing variety and amount of materials, including masses of Sargassum, comes ashore and attracts many animals. Some inhabitants of the beach environment are ghost crabs, ground squirrels, and an occasianal coyote at the beach edge to scavenge in the early morning. Brown pelicans, which are making a comeback in the area, require large areas of quiet roosting space, but find it for a very brief time in the early mornings before they are disturbed by human influence. A great number of migrating birds navigate north and south along the coastline. The sea throws up Portuguese man-of-war, periodically in incredible numbers; the cabbagehead jellyfish (Stomolophus) provides a lot of food for many organisms. The recent red tide killed millions of fish and was almost the final blow to the economy of Port Aransas, at least temporarily, because not only did it create a very unpleasant environment for several weeks, but the publicity was rather hysterical and severe. It was nonetheless a very interesting and extensive phenomenon caused by a popular explosion of the dinoflagellate Ptychodiscus brevis. Among the things that come ashore are natural debris, natural mortalities, including, during what is called a "fallout of birds", many landbirds that do not make it across the Gulf of Mexico while migrating. I am the local observer for the sea turtle stranding network and this year has been phenomenal in the number of dead or injured sea turtles stranded along our beaches. I am also the local observer for the stranded marine mammal network. The latest stranding was a pigmy sperm whale, a 9-ft, 500­lb animal that was apparently alive when it was first found on the National Seashore, but dead when I got to it. In the last three years we have had 12 live strandings of seven different species of rather unusual offshore dolphins or whales. This may be a reflection of an increase in the number of observations or a real increase in the number of mortalities, but there does seem to be an increase in strandings on our coastline. In fact, the public wonders whether entanglement with or ingestion of seaborne litter might be a factor in this increase in marine mammal, turtle and bird mortality. Dr. Costlow showed a picture of an ideal beach. However, our shoreline hosts another phenomenon known as Spring Break. In the course of almost 1,400 separate observations over the nine years of this survey I have never found anything more difficult to count than the number of cars and people on the beach at Spring break. DBRARY ~Ul'lJVERSfTY OF TEXAS AT AUSTifil MARINESCIENCE INSTITUTE PORT ARANSAS, TEXAS 78373-1267 It's much easier to count 6,000 laughing gulls than to do the count of perhaps 100,000 people and 20-to 30, 000 vehicles. The vehicles have an impact on the beach, which is torn up by tire-tracks or, under different conditions, compacted to the hard consistency of a roadbed. The most appalling result of that number of people and vehicles on the beach is 1itter. The 1 ittering problem is caused not only by what comes in from offshore; there is certainly a contribution from beachgoers in the more popular parts of the beach. Littering laws are almost never enf creed; they are apparently unenforceable. With so large a crowd, the police are just trying to keep people from killing each other, let alone littering the environment. Port Aransas has a fulltime beach­c leaning crew (seven days a week). Within the city limits a $5 per year beach-parking fee is charged. The money goes toward keeping a fulltime cleaning crew. After Spring Break the beach looks nothing like most people's ideal, although many seem to accept it. It appears to be standard operating procedure to throw trash out of a vehicle, especially in a vacation place like the barrier island beaches. Glass bottles become a menace and are · now prohibited on the beach. Aluminum cans are not found in great numbers; people remove them for recycling and in the process often leave the rest of the trash strewn about the beach. There are, in our economically depressed times, certain people who find it necessary to 1 i ve on the beach for periods of time. They often leave behind a scene at once pitiable and shameful. Sometimes that sojourn on the beach is long­term--several years--until the shack or bus literally falls apart and the people disappear. The condominiums employ various beach-cleaning machines that clean up everything, including the Sargassum weed. Left alone, the weed plays an important role as a binding agent to ho1 d the sand on the beach. In samples collected from these piles of material cleaned off the beach, weights and calculated volumes indicate that by far the greatest amount of material collected by some of these beach-cleaning machines is sand rather than weed or trash. We are subjected every now and then to very large oil spills. There are vast problems associated with trying to remove massive amounts of tar, oils and dispersant solutions and disposing of truckloads of contaminated sand. It cannot be taken off-island because that is not allowed by law and it certainly does nothing good for any part of the barrier island environment. One of the things we discovered during the Ixtoc oil spill was that oil flowed down into the tunnels of some of the burrowing organisms, particularly Callianassa, the ghost-shrimp of the shoreline. An emulsion of sand, oil and seawater, being heavier than the water itself, flowed down burrowholes and formed perfect casts. There are periodic, seasonal occurrences of oil on the beaches. It has not been shown conclusively where it comes from: natural seepage from Gulf sediments, or the result of oil industry activities. The geochemists say weathering is such a problem that, beyond a certain amount of fingerprinting, its origin is difficult to determine. Some very large things sometimes wash ashore. Shrimpboats occasionally get caught on a sandbar. An 80-ft, wooden-hulled shrimpboat stranded at midnight became matchsticks on the beach by 7:00 a.m. Three legs of a jack-up rig, which collapsed in a storm off South Baker Beach, looked as if they were going to be permanent features of the beach. Ingenious man came along with a special vessel, air- jetted a pit to refloat each structure and towed them away. Because I want to understand the pathways by which man-made debris comes ashore, it is essential to record all accompanying types of debris items, including natural materials. My estimates are for some 40 categories of commonly found materials which I quantify on a scale of 0 to 5; zero is none, 5 is as much as I ever see. Found frequently on the survey, onion sacks, stuffed with more onion sacks, were a mystery. Shrimpers with freezer compartments use plastic onion sacks to bag and store their catch. One of my trash categories I call "green bottles": these are bleach bottles--their names, emulating Clorox, are Clorolex or Clarasol--that come from Mexico and arrive on our beaches in great quantities. I use these as a crude indicator of when the currents change, coming from the south to the north. Few glass floats are found; most floats used in the fishing and other industries are plastic or metal and come from a variety of countries. The Soviet Union uses a very distinctive kind of plastic and a metal one comes from Cuba, but there are also Japanese, Norwegian and Spanish floats. One cannot quite assume nowadays, in the age of the multinational company, internationalism--especially the Common Market--that something made in Spain actually comes from a Spanish ship. Much of the trash is obviously from Common Market ships. Containers that are full, sealed and apparently not leaking are often found. The Coast Guard has collected recently over 400 55-gallon barrels off our coastline. They advise that the contents are often toxic substances and that labels are not always accurate. Sometimes barrels at least have labels informing that their contents are not very nice, but quite often they are completely anonymous, battered, leaking. The materials in the majority of these barrels are petroleum-derived products, that is, oils, but some of them are rather toxic. The containers end up on our beach, people drive over them and spatter the contents onto the beach. I turn them over to the Coast Guard to put into their toxic waste dump. The oil industry leaves its names, purchase order and lot numbers on many i terns. There has been a definite decline in this kind of material in the last few months. It might be said that the oil industry slump is having some beneficial effects on the littering of our beaches. Another very connnon item is plastic sheeting, yards of it. Used to cover materials taken out to the oil rigs by service industries or oil companies, it finds its way onto the beach. Once there it remains, covered with perhaps tons of sand. During a recent clean­up organized in Texas by the Committee for Environmental Education, volunteers found there was no way they could remove this plastic without the use of really big digging equipment. The National Seashore is a very long strip of what should be beautiful, clean sand. Unfortunately, it is not. The Seashore and Mustang Island to the north, are often carpeted by an unsightly assemblage of trash and debris, largely man-made in origin (Figure 1.1). It is like this frequently enough that the Parks Service often gets letters from people who say they will never return to the National Seashore. When this material comes ashore it remains there until a catastrophic event, such as a hurricane, arrives. We do have a problem and, apart from what it does to the economy, 1t has a direct effect on the animals. The oiling, of course, affects shorebirds. Some birds eat materials not generally considered to be edible. Immature laughing gulls have been seen trying to eat write-protect rings from 2400-ft reels of magnetic tape. These are used by the seismic exploration industry on their multichannel seismic recording instruments which use a tape once every 20 minutes or so. To protect the valuable data, the write-protect ring is removed and, whether it is thrown directly into the sea or dumped with the trash from the vessel, it eventually finds its way into the sea and onto our beaches. In fact, they constitute another of the survey' s trash categories. Broken, the rings look like eels, wnich is perhaps why birds try to eat them, although gulls attempt to eat brightly colored things, whether or not they look like one of their prey items. A hawks bill turtle · was found with a flipper entangled in an onion sack; the limb grew around the constriction. Another hawksbill, that must have been entangled for weeks, was found emaciated, still alive, but with neck and both front flippers entangled in plastic onion sack. Rescued, it is now recovering in one of our tanks. Birds, especially gulls which are scavengers, are often seen with six­pack-rings around their necks or trailing lengths of monofilament. A leg entangled by monofilament means such birds become snared in power­1 ines and trees, or the leg so constricted it becomes gangrenous, swells to monstrous proportions, atrophies and eventually drops off. An attempt has been made in the past three years to quantify the amount of trash, including natural debris, on this beach, to correlate it with measurements of temperature, salinity and currents, and to try to understand how and when it comes ashore. There are so many factors governing the deposition of trash and debris on our beaches--currents, tides, time of year, winds--that it is almost impossible. We might have some equations and put them together to try to find some answers, but none of it is simple. Why is it one morning there are masses of driftwood ashore, while on the previous morning there was none? Why is it that the driftwood disappears in a couple of days and is replaced by Sargassum weed? Perhaps these questions are answerable, but is a very complex set of equations. In the meantime, I will show you preliminary results from my 0-5 ratings system. Figure 1. 2 shows the seasonal distribution of debris items that are natural rather than man-made (although "driftwood" includes finished wood­products as well as tree parts, and the incidence of dead fish on the beach may include those discarded by surface fishermen). Data are averaged bi-weekly over the period of October, 1983 through the present (November, 1986); some 750 separate observations were made during this time. The vertical scale (INDEX) ranges from 0 for none of that category observed, to 5 for the maximum amount I normally see. While this is a personal and subjective evaluation, the frequency of observation (usually every other day, but daily in 1984) do show some basic trends. I will soon be "calibrating" these indices by sorting and weighing debris items at different sites along my study beach at the same time I do the litter estimates. The two most numerous natural items, Sargassum weed and Portuguese man o 'war ( Physalia physalis) show a marked seasonal distribution with highest peaks in the spring. Cabbagehead jellyfish (Stomolophus) and seeds of the black mangrove (Avicenna germinans) are washed ashore in the winter months, while the water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes), a freshwater plant, is most numerous in late summer, coinciding with runoff from Mexican rivers. Even though man-made and natural debris items are frequently washed ashore together, seasonal fluctuations in man·-made litter are less obvious from my index data (Figure 1 • 3). This may be because offshore commercial activities (transportation and oil and gas exploration) are generally not seasonal. There is, however, a definite seasonality in the beverage can category. A peak in spring (Spring Break) and another in summer correspond to increased recreational activity at these times, both offshore and on the beach. The "green bottle" category (Mexican bleach bottle) seems to peak in the summer; presumably the bottles are borne ashore by currents coming from the south. To fully understand the nature and magnitude of the problem, several other parts of the equation must be evaluated. I have just started to analyze these data and have yet to correlate the litter with my measurements of tides, currents, and weather patterns. Mr. Anthony F. Amos was born and educated in England. He has training and experience in electronics research and oceanic circulation with special interest in polar oceanography. He is presently a Research Associate at the University of Texas' Marine Science Institute at Port Aransas. Mr. Amos is the local observer for the National Stranded Marine Mammal and Turtle Networks; official cooperative observer for the U.S. Weather Service and maintains the tide gauge at Aransas Pass. He has an interest in photography and was awarded three ·prizes in the Audubon Society's 1983 Salon of Photography. Mr. Amos writes a regular column on the beach environment for a local newspaper and is Editor of UTMSI's Newsletter and the institution's brochure. Figure l.la.--Mustang Island gulf beach, September 1980. Figure 1.lb.--Padre Island National Seashore, April 1984. CABBAGEHEAD JELLYFISH (Stomalophus) MANGROVE SEEDS (PRIMARILY BLACK MANGROVES) 5.0 5.0 4 . 0 4.0 GS 3.o 3.o 0 2.0 2.0 z 1.0 1.0 H .0 .0 JAN FEB MAR APA MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC Figure 1.2.--Seasonal distribution of some naturally occurring beach debris (averaged bi-weekly from 750 observations made between October 1983 and November 1985). 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 1. 0 .0 PLASTIC SHEETING Figure 1.3.--Seasonal distributipn of some man-made beach debris (averaged bi-weekly from 750: observations made between October 1983 and November 1985).