Rachel Steinberg, Willis Elkins, and I, went to look for garbage around Co-op City in the Bronx.
The Eastchester Bay is at the mouth of the Hutchinson River, where it widens into the Long Island Sound.
We launched from Turtle Cove, and the water seemed clear and clean.
Families lined the banks of Pelham Bay Park, fishing, swimming and hanging out in the sun.
“Our first piece of trash!” said Rachel.
We spotted a rocky island just south of the Pelham Bridge.
“Looks like there’s some trash up there.” said Willis.
He was right.
People must walk out here at low tide and leave stuff.
We had come to check out Goose Island,
a little island right in the middle of the bay.
As we paddled around the island slowly, a flock of egrets flew just ahead of us.
We stepped onto the island,
and Willis made his first catch of the day;
a fine opaque, turquoise BIC lighter. Willis collected them for a year, as part of his project The New York City Lighter Log.
You see, Willis Elkins is a bit of an expert on the proliferation of synthetic trash around New York.
For years he has logged, mapped, collected, studied and written about all kinds of synthetic trash. This image is from a chart from his investigation of the Plumb Beach Channel.
But there actually wasn’t that much manmade crap on Goose Island,
mostly bones,
feathers,
this massive oyster,
something H.R. Giger designed,
and THIS (which Willis pointed out to be a tiny seahorse, picked apart by birds).
“Lets get out of here,” we thought,
“and go see some junk that people made.”
Willis knew about a little inlet on the western shore of the bay.
He had walked there last year on his hunt for lighters.
When we landed, we saw that the bank was alive with mussels,
and hundreds of these guys, who raised their little fists at us when we advanced.
But back behind a stand of reeds, we found what we were looking for;
a wash of plastic debris.
Willis said that this was a great place to find lighters, and I could see why.
There were tons of little plastic things, about 3 inches long.
Some of them were even still useable!
It was a veritable synthetic soup.
Willis and Rachel’s bag began to fill with little plastic things,
while I couldn’t help but gravitate toward the organic,
or simulated organic (as was the case with this headless duck decoy).
The tide was leaving our inlet fast,
so we paddled back into the bay, through shallow water.
“What’s your feeling about swimming off the boat?” asked Rachel and Willis.
“Great idea!” I said.
After walking through the mud and garbage, it felt good to get into the clear, deep water of the bay.
It turned out that we weren’t done with mud, however.
While we were garbage hunting, the tide had gone out of Turtle Bay,
and left us with 200 yards of quicksand-mud to traverse back to the car.
I was ill-equipped for the foot-sucking terrain,
but Willis and Rachel trooped ahead.
I didn’t get the best parts on camera, but imagine this a foot deeper,
and add the smell of low-low tide.
“Was this a good day in terms of lighters?” I asked.
“Not really.” said Willis.
“I probably already found a lot of them when I came here last year.”
To see Willis’ complete lighter project, and see thousands more lighters, visit the LESS Lighter Log!
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