In Maine, fishing major contributor of shore debris

Editor’s Note: The BDN solicited information from the Maine Island Trail Association to explain its findings relative to the Ocean Conservancy’s report released Wednesday on ocean trash. MITA, since its inception 20 years ago, has staged island cleanups both fall and spring on some 168 island and mainland sites.

Every spring and fall since its inception MITA has brought volunteers to Maine’s islands to remove flotsam from the shore.

Spanning a day or a weekend, these island cleanups are volunteer-driven and include stops on multiple islands. In 2006, nearly 70 volunteers participated in more than 12 events and removed more than 250 bags of marine debris.

Typically, the goal of the cleanups is to collect trash from as many islands as possible in the shortest amount of time. While this method allows MITA to gather the most marine debris, it is not necessarily conducive to studying the type of debris that volunteers collect. But in 2007, the Maine Coastal Program provided MITA with a grant to fund four island cleanups to gain a better understanding of the make-up of shoreline flotsam.

On the other, regularly scheduled island cleanups in 2007, more than 100 volunteers cleaned 95 individual islands and netted more than 400 bags of trash. A separate cleanup day yielded nearly 150 tires.

Using data cards developed by the Ocean Conservancy for its International Coastal Cleanup events, dozens of MITA volunteers headed out to gather quantitative data on the type of debris found on the shoreline.

Armed with checklists and plastic bags, the volunteers meticulously marked down each piece of trash they encountered before bagging it. The size and weight of the items were not considered, merely the number and type of each item found, providing information that could be used to determine ratios of a particular trash type to others.

The four islands chosen for the study were similar in relative size and exposure to the open ocean but spanned four regions of the coast (Casco Bay, Muscongus Bay, Penobscot Bay and east of Schoodic Peninsula) to capture the spectrum of marine debris affecting the Maine shoreline.

The goals of the project were twofold:

. To generate a data set that would help MITA, the Maine Coastal Program and other coastal organizations better understand the nature and extent of the marine debris situation on Maine’s coastal islands.

. To provide a resource that might be used to inform debris reduction initiatives such as policy and outreach efforts.

Our findings confirmed what many of us have observed over the years on the islands – that the bulk of the debris in our coastal waters originates close to home and is predominantly a byproduct of having an active, year-round fishing industry.

Fishing operations are not solely responsible for the marine debris, but on the four islands surveyed by MITA volunteers, debris from recreational or commercial fishing and vessel operations accounted for 65 percent of the more than 3,400 pieces of trash collected.

Debris most likely derived from recreational boaters or hunters contributed nearly all of the rest of debris at 33 percent.

These pre-established categories were created by the Ocean Conservancy to simplify the processes of data collection and analysis for its shoreline cleanups, which are typically held on popular mainland beaches or publicly accessible shores.

Of the remaining data card categories, smoking-related trash and medical-personal hygiene items each made up 1 percent of what the volunteers found, while dumping activities (intentionally abandoning items such as appliances or tires) made up less than 1 percent.

Lengths of rope and pieces of foam from buoys or floats were the most common items found, making up about 40 percent of the total debris. This can be viewed as both good and bad news. The fact that the majority of this debris is incidental, such as line cut by motorboat propellers or foam ripped from floats in a storm, is a positive thing. It means wanton littering isn’t the biggest culprit on the coast.

But having all of that foam disintegrating in our waters could be harmful to marine life and the health of the intertidal zones. Thank goodness for the MITA cleanup volunteers, island adopters and monitor skippers who work tirelessly to remove this flotsam every spring, summer and fall.

Brian Marcaurelle is MITA’s stewardship manager. He may be reached through www.mita.org.