On August 7th 2012 we went on a river cruise in Newburry Port Massachusetts. The cruise traveled around Newburry Port and up the Merrimack River. Before the cruise we took a walk on the beach and picked up trash along the way. Among the usual balloons, bottles, wrappers and straws, I kept finding these plastic white disks.
I thought, "What are these? I know I have seen them before." Then I remembered I read a blog article on
the NH Marine Debris blog about the Hookset New Hampshire Water treatment plant over a year ago.
The article read, "Emergency Beach Cleanup! Small white circular mesh disks, approximately 2" in diameter, were
released into the Merrimack River from the Hooksett, NH Wastewater
Treatment Facility following heavy rainstorms .... It's estimated that hundreds of thousands of the disks were released to
the Merrimack River - these are now in MA and NH coastal areas and
beaches."
Over a year later and these discs are still washing up on New Hampshire and Massachusetts beaches. I found 12 of them on our short walk. The interesting thing is we know where these disks came from. Here is a map of the path the disks took from Hooksett NH.
It shows that plastic debris in the ocean can come from pretty far up
stream. Those plastic disks had to travel quite a ways down the Merrimack
before reaching the ocean. The disks were identifiable, but what other
plastic debris comes from Hooksett, or further upstream, in, say
Concord? The same question goes for any river. I have captured plastic
flowing down the Connecticut River. This study shows a definite
connection to roadside litter and debris in the ocean.
