Continued high tides, smooth beach, more trash

Sandblasted!

A cold gale this morning, I was getting sandblasted and could barely run, or pick up the ever-accumulating garbage - my bags were whipping in the wind. Pretty soon I'll have to call it quits for the winter, and leave it to the trucks, shooters and garbage. But I managed to pick up a couple of bagfuls.

a flash of green and a tide of plastic

Rain overnight made this moss/lichen growing on the upper beach more vivid green.

balloons continue to arrive from Connecticut

and plastic etc trash from everywhere:

The oceans are now essentially immense garbage dumps, and the plastic breaks down and ends up in our diet and bodies.

Thanksgiving: dead deer on the beach

There's lots of hunters in the woods behind the beach, and wounded deer sometimes stagger down to the sea to die.

Happy Birthday Reeves Beach

 These drifted over from Connecticut - it baffles me why otherwise decent people release these killers (see https://www.thedodo.com/in-the-wild/balloons-hurt-animals-risks). 

Another Stuck Car; Inviolate Beach; Trashed Beach

This car was stuck in the sand, and abandoned, early this morning. The far western beach was still inviolate, though most of the beach is now churned up like the aftermath of a stock car race.

Lots of trash everywhere

rock, paper, scissors?

Rock/paper/scissors? No, rock, plastic, skeet. Rocks on the beach range from pebbles to huge boulders; here's one that caught my eye this morning

and here with its big brothers

but these red spots are fragments of clay pigeons - I only pick up the bigger pieces like this:

I filled several bags with trash like this:

Amazingly the beach beyond the big rocks was not yet scarred by truck-tracks

A Tide of Trash, and an egg case

The high tides brought a ton of trash but also this shark egg case;

 I quickly filled up a contractor bag with garbage:

and then another small bag;

but there's lots more to do in the coming days.

Briefly, a smooth beach

I confess for me a beach with ruts isn't a proper beach - probably no-one dreams of a beach scarred by the deep tire-tracks left by numerous vehicles. Today the high tide was driven unusually high by the north-east winds associated with the the recent snowfall, and when it withdrew it left behind an unusually smooth and beautiful beach. Unfortunately today I only got down there after a few trucks had already "raped" the virgin beach - in a few seconds there were deep ruts which will remain for weeks or even months until the next nor-easter. I'm unable to understand the attraction of leaving one's ugly mark over miles of virgin sand, but it seems to be widespread in the Town of Riverhead. The longer I live here (28 years now) the less at home I feel.
Anyway, luckily these trucks didn't go all the way down the beach (nor did their drivers emerge to enjoy the bracing conditions), and after battling strong cold winds I got to a long pristine stretch:

On the way back there was lots of new trash to pick up.