Manly Beach Drift "wood" - June

A monthly summary of what has washed onto the shore or beach through the winds, tides, waves or human action. Marine debris, flora and fauna, dead or alive:

010609
A large reef fish, bluebottles, coconuts
Willy Wagtails surfing the kelp heaps. A very large Pelican/Gannet feather full of parasites.

JUNKSPACE:
Two people with plastic bags collected things, wood? unseen before.
Fumes at the beach: cars, eateries and smokers
- There are Life Guards for the aquatic zone, but where are they for the terrestrial slow lingering toxins?
Noise: Building sites all along

020609
Cat fish, bivalves, sponges, shells
Swallows and Willy Wagtails surfing the kelp
Kelp holding the beach in place, if no one interferes

Junk space:
Plastic junk, a lot of bottles and plastic pellets seemed to be accumulating in front of the 'litter free' beach club. More surfing plastic bits.

What can't be 'cleaned' with the aid of petrol at the beach doesn't get done. It is impossible - the blind spot.

Glass, sharp and in all colours and sizes.

Industrialised cleaning of the promenade at prime visitor time repels users. High pressure hosing exposes people nearby to aerosol pollution. It ruins the ambiance for hours.

030609
Kelp heaped up at the northern end
Sponges of many shapes and sizes, many pink/red
Coconuts, Sea urchins, dead fish

Junk Space:
Plastic, especially bottles. Countless light blue tops
Glass, bumper crop, sharp, many bottlenecks
Food wrappers, the one mouthful type, now also for dogs!
- Can't industry take full life cycle responsibility for their (anti-) products?
Fishing junk: plastic ropes, fishing string all tools to entangle wildlife.
Light pollution in daylight

040609:
Bird scape: Four very agile Gannets (Morus serrator) were busy diving. Willy Wagtails were patrolling the kelp. Large swarms of magpies fight over the tips of pines. Sulphur Crested Cockatoos are still into pine seeds.

Kelp at the northern end is grabbing the sand back, Cunjevoi and Sea tulips mingle with the plastic bottles.

Most of the 'drift'wood is of anthropogenic origin, sawn-off and dumped. A lot of garden rejects.

JUNK SPACE:
Fishing Junk: Floaters, long nylon strings, plastic ropes, a car tyre with intricate entangled ropes tied to plastic container.
The plastic pellets still linger, especially in front of the 'litter free' Surf Club/beach. There seems to be an unusual amount of plastic bottles, tops and fast food wrappers/cutlery of a throw-away society.
Glass, not much today.
Odor scape: Fumes from idling diesel tourist buses and unpleasant fat from some eateries at the beach.

090609
Dead fish, nice large sponges,

At the Sth Steyne end the pine roots are exposed on the beach by the erosion, caused by the climate- change accelerating behaviour of fossil fools.

Junk space:
A record amount of broken glass, all over the beach. Post-event glass.
Black plastic bags for dog feces blowing along the beach.
Garbage: Take away packaging and drink tins.
The Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens) planted around the base of the pines squashed into pulp by a stampede of feet. Post event damage.

120609
Styropore in all shapes and sizes along all of Manly Beach. The petroleum product, used for some many fast food throwaway items, does leach into the products. Everlasting plastic rubbish.

150609
A great variety of shells and coral pieces all along the beach.
Two Pelicans flying towards the polluted Manly Lagoon

Junk space:
Glass, a huge crop of all colours and sizes. All freshly cracked scattered all over Manly Beach. Let's call it the post-weekend crop.


170609
Kelp all roots up is doing its best to hold the sand.

Bird Audiospace:
A couple of Gannets (Morus serrator) dive directly at Manly Beach, Sth Steyne, neatly between the flags.

35+ Sulphur-crested Cockatoo, (Cacatua galerita) travel through the pine arcade. Both at rest and in flight emitting their distinctive raucous call. Feeding together on the pine cones, trimming the odd branches, hanging upside down.

The dogaholics walking their packs underneath seem to be blind to such an event. How could anyone think of confining such a powerful social bird in a cage? Why are so many inviting them with junkfood to their balconies in Manly, culturing dependence and inviting the demolition of their houses? In many places they still shoot and poison the protected animal.

Two Masked Lapwings (Vanellus miles) fly over at the Queenscliff end emitting their characteristic day and night call during flight. The Plovers' habitat is reduced to dirty puddles near roads where they are killed by cars, dogs and cats. Some sub-urban birds have given up breeding all together and leave it all up to the human species and their canines.

A White-faced Heron (Egretta novaehollandiae) was seeking refuge on top of a tall building, as the wet slopes of Queenscliff were crowded with dogs. Engraved into local sandstone rocks by the indigenous people of Manly, the birds lived in this area for eons.

A Pied Currawong (Strepera graculina) hunted in the lower levels of the pines, filling its 'larder'.

190609
A very large spiky Porcupinefish together with a toxic looking spray can. Is the zoo imitating toxic 'reality'?

Plastic lighters, 'party' baloons with long entanglement ribbons for wildlife. Dog feces plastic bags, that claim to be 'biodegradable'.
Glass, a lot of it, especially in front of 'Manly's litter-free beach'.

220609
A fresh delivery of plastic pellets. Shredded styropore. Rejected broken surfboards. Many plastic 'throw-away' lighters.
The smell of miasma in front of the 'litter-free' beach club, emanating from the 'run-off' pipe.
The horizon cluttered by a cruise liner billowing pollution into the blue sky and Pacific.
Unusual severe beach erosion all along the beach.

230609
Severe erosion of Manly beach. Even if all autoholics kicked the habit, a 25 m sea level rise is a "can do" for coming generations.

A new large amount of plastic resin pellets (nurdles, mermaid tears) along the southern 'run-off' pipe. This is the raw material for the plastic industry to make the many plastic goods. "Over 250 billion pounds of nurdles are shipped around the world to plastic processing factories every year." A lot gets lost due to inefficiencies and ends up on beaches and in wildlife. All the other plastic junk at the beach, drink bottles, tops, lighters etc are made from these pellets. Today there were some extra large pellets, all mingling with styropore.

School group launching various 'message in a bottle'. Hope they took the glass.

240609
Erosion gnawing at beachfront. Rocks at North Steyne Beach now exposed as well. Manly Beach is fenced off at the parade end. The beach is closed. Earth-moving equipment at work to manufacture a beach at high costs. Sisyphus rolling boulders in the anthropocene?

A new delivery of plastic pellets, together with a lot of minced plastic junk. It has the appearance of a cost-effective tip rather than a beach.

On the invisible side of ocean dumping: All the dumping of e-waste at the kerbside, containing "toxic chemicals, including lead, mercury, cadmium, beryllium, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), chromium, arsenic, antimony and bromide" will no longer be possible by 2010.

A brown haze lingering at the horizon.

250609
A Little Pied Cormorant (Phalacrocorax melanoleucos) out of a habitat, searching for a spot to dry its wings.

Erosion. Human labour and earth-moving equipment rolling rocks at the beach. Daily, more and more rocks and fibrous matting is being exposed. Beach and promenade are fenced off.
Despite a forest of signs, families are magically attracted to the sand cliffs and 'rockeries'. One carer by-passed the fence at the beach and swung his toddler at the edge of a 1.7 m sandcliff, rocks underneath. Hungry for adventure.

A very large amount of sharp glass all along the beach.
The usual plastic mince, car tyres more often lately.

Dogs, like every day at Queenscliff beach. Was there ever one conviction?

300609
A large assortment of shells, corals and sponges all along Manly Beach.

Again, an unusual amount of freshly cracked glass of all colours.

The erosion of the beach, especially at the southern end reveals a lot of junkspace: Cement rubble with rusty iron bars jarring out of the ground. Large amounts of fibrous white sheets that used to cover up the 'foundation rocks'.
Council's fences and barriers get broken by the public forcing their 'right to access'. Families seem to be drawn to the rubble as a funfair. Sandy beaches never seem to attract that many minors. Check out the detailed 'erosion' slideshow here.

See also Driftwood of:
May, April, March, February, January, 2009