Appears a lot of people lost their plastic water bottles!
If you were one of them, you might want to look in Silver Canyon on the backside of Catalina.
Strange as it might be, this pristine, completely isolated beach is littered with plastic bottles, carried by the prevailing current and wind:
The "Catalina Eddy" effect.
Predominant NW wind flow spins around in the Southern California Bight.
The busy ports of Catalina were remarkably clean, despite the hoardes of people over the Buccaneer's weekend. So we were shocked when we sailed around the "remote", hardly visited South corner and came across piles of trash on the beach!
The pygmy mammoth supervises the trash collection
We started picking up garbage. Action is a good remedy for this form of depression. We piled the bottles, styrofoam, and broken fishing rods into a handy City of Long Beach trash receptacle. We didn't feel great about ourselves, but we felt better.
The Silver Canyon and Palisades, seemingly pristine.
What's up with our society's acceptance of waste? It's absurd actually. Economic theory would suggest that "inefficiencies" should be reduced. One-time use plastic bottles are a ridiculous inefficiency.Some of the resources wasted for a few gulps of water:
- plastic manufacture with petroleum or alternatives
- transportation with fossil fuel
- disposal on landfills
- water pollution affecting fish, sea birds, turtles, marine life in general; which we depend on for protein and countless benefits.
What are some alternatives to plastic water bottles?
- Britta water filters in the sink
- Nalgene / Klean Kanteens.
- Sparkletts-type 5 gallons jugs of water, delivered to your home or refilled at 25 cents per gallon with reverse osmosis.
From Little Harbor to Silver Canyon: about 8 nautical miles
