Remote Beaches

 

One of the perks of my job is that I frequently get to visit remote beaches.  I do a lot of surveys where I look for archaeological sites on the landscape, and, since the Alutiiq people have always lived on the coast and make their living from the sea, this means I survey a lot of coastline.  And this means I get to visit some pretty remote beaches.

This Tuesday I visited Sitkinak Island for a helicopter survey.  Some of the beaches we visited are so exposed that it is difficult to land a boat or floatplane on them.  They are extremely difficult places to reach.  For this reason they also have some of the best beach combing - everything cool has not been picked up already.  

You know it is a remote beach when you find glass balls, and on this last survey I found two and my co worker one. Glass balls are what fishermen used to use to keep the tops of their fishing nets on the surface.  But they stopped using them about 50 years ago, and they are getting pretty hard to find.

These days fishermen use plastic floats, and it is sad to see how so much of the marine debris is plastic fishing gear.  Unless this stuff is cleaned up all this plastic is going to stay in the environment forever.  In contrast, glass balls are not only cool to find, but they recycle into sand when broken.  Maybe fishermen should consider going back to glass balls?

Patrick

Molly with a plastic and glass float

Modern plastic net floats surrounded this glass ball

Keller with a whale skull