the (intermittant) shifty shore series begins

Winter weather makes walking the shore more difficult. While we're indoors I'm going to start a series on our shifty shoreline and its social and natural history. This will be an occasional series as time and research dictates.

(the two photos are of Scotts bluff an actively eroding pile of glacial till near my home-the pinacle in the left photo shows in left side of photo above)

Ecology is about connections. In late December my good friend Roland launched a Civil Disobedience action at a Scotts Bluff home building site. He did so because he wanted people to understand the connection between luxury resort home construction on the lake shore and the relentless fraying of the tapestry of life that continues to thin as threads are broken and lost.

How do you make people see that there are connections between their personal lifestyle choices and the general well being of our planetary life support system? I'm going to give it a shot though I'm not optimistic about any impacts or understanding that may result.

The shore of a great lake, like that of an ocean, is a shifty restless piece of real estate. It's dynamic and inherent instability makes it an interesting place. That's part of its appeal as a home site. But no homeowner wants to see his house be washed away by that shiftiness. So inevitably human ingenuity comes to the rescue and the beach is “armored”, locked away and entombed beneath a pile of large rocks. Now you have a view but no more beach. Problem is, your neighbors or public shoreline lands nearby also don't have a beach if enough homeowners go the “hardening” route in order to protect their own little piece of paradise.

On Lake Ontario, as elsewhere, material eroded from the shore becomes the beach. It then is moved along on the south side of the lake as “drift” carried generally west to east. Seawalls that stop erosion also shut down the beach formation process. Any unarmored land, once it loses its beach, will erode even faster since the waves strike directly upon the foot of the shore. So the more you “harden” the worse erosion gets for unprotected land. No one, shoreline owners and the general public alike, gets to enjoy a beach either.

For the rich guy with his “trophy house” who doesn't care about anything but a view, this may be acceptable. But for those of us who cherish walking along the water's edge, the world is a poorer place for no longer having beaches. And as we shall see, the vanished beach literally makes us poorer, too, as it usually ends up costing the taxpayers (many of whom don't own waterfront property) a great deal of money.

In posts to come we'll look at how some other communities are trying to deal with and “manage” beach erosion. There have been some truly spectacular foul ups in this endeavor. Guess who is paying for them?

seasonal variations in beach trash

The trash found along this short stretch of shoreline is a snapshot of the wider world. It's a sampling that reflects human and natural activity in two nations. These days during the season of winter northwester winds, a surprisingly common component of beach trash is customs seals from containers. One suspects Toronto and or possibly the Hamilton area are the sources. Like the zebra mussels and the round gobies the little plastic strips reflect globalized economic activity on and around the lake.

The one to the left says prologix- a global logistics company that presumeably does business in Toronto harbor.

Another common component and year around of the beach trash “community” are the ubiquitous tampon applicators ( known as New Jersey sea shells to some beach combers.)They seem to pass through the sewage treatment plants with little difficulty. One wonders what else unseen goes into our lake from the waste pipes? Pharmaceuticals?various household toxins?gold fish and dead mice? Strange and new bacterial spores or radioactive cat litter? Maybe we don't want to know.

Large pieces of drift wood often with saw cuts, are everywhere along the terminal berm reflecting I suppose the rains of late summer and fall and subsequent floods and heavy outflows of tributary rivers. Not long ago a male body washed up on Port Bay's beach about 2 miles west of where I walk. He had hiking boots on. Had he fallen into a river? Surprisingly frequent on this walk were pieces of rusty steel. Did heavy currents move them out into the lake? Or did they reflect more houses being eaten up by lake shore erosion and heavy fall storms?The metal frame and springs of an upholstered chair seem explainable by river flooding. But a cinder block? Already rounded by wave action one suspects this has to be a recent immigrant to the beach trash community.

Perhaps the most common trash item consistently present on the beach at all seasons is a juice or water bottle. Also quite common lately are throw away lighters. Odd to think that perhaps the most enduring artifacts of our current society are items of trash. They say a plastic spoon is good for at least a couple hundred years. Pampers take a couple generations to decompose in landfills. And the contents of the steel casks of rad waste now parked by the lake will remain toxic for at least a hundred thousand years-a span approaching geological time.

Only ten more shopping days until Christmas.

extreme beach combing

In response to the recent post about strange sea serpents I will post a find from two years ago. this was eveidently a stranded sea serpent that beached during its spawning season. It displays the typical breeding tubercles of the greater black plasticus (freshwater morph.) A day or two after this was taken it had disappeared...

In ten years of working this stretch of beach this is by far the biggest beach treasure I ever spotted. But maybe somebody else can do better? send photos to susan@silverwaters.com

first post for lake ontario edgewalker's blog

This blog from the edge will consist of periodic posts by me and hopefully others on beaches, beach treasures, beach mysteries and I suspect other topics, too.We'll focus on Lake Ontario beaches at least for now since that's where my finds will be from mainly.



Beaches are special places. I love ranging far and wide upon the open waters of the lake with my sailboat. But I also enjoy exploring afoot. You can keep going back to a good beach because it keeps changing. Every week it's different and new again. New skipper stones, new lucky rocks, new oddities and driftwood. Beaches in general are among the most dynamic and ephemeral of landscapes. This is what makes building houses by and on them so problematic. Yet we're drawn to that very quality of the shore. You just never know what might turn up there. Kinda like e Bay.



A couple weeks ago a friend and I found this fragment of a plastic sign(see photo to left). Great lakes school? We couldn't quite make out the letters above. But the run together small letters suggested url to us. I tucked the fragment in my pocket and took it home to show to my spouse. Great Lakes Schooner he guessed and googled it. Sure enough. There's a company that does boat rides with a big steel three master and a bunch of other boats around Toronto.http://greatlakesschooner.com

So what's the coolest, oddest, weirdest or just plan way out thing you've found on the beach? I'll see if I can figure out how to post my favorite here tomorrow. Meantime, send me a photo and or description of your best beach "treasure". send it to susan@silverwaters.com Happy hunting.