January 17, 2017. Flotsam, Jetsam or Rubbish?

January 17, 2017.  Flotsam, Jetsam or Rubbish?  We biked to the beach this afternoon and walked a spell.  The beach was not the same beach we've walked the last ten days.  Today, it was covered with debris.  The cause?  The wind changed direction.  Instead of a prevailing southwest wind, it switched to southeast.  The wind blew the debris you see in the photographs onto the beach.  I am pretty sure is isn't flotsam.  I don't think it is jetsam either.  I think it is rubbish which washed off the beach, north or south of here, and the wind blew it back onto the shore here.  

The most common debris was bottles, water bottles and beer bottles.  The beer bottle was a Corona, a Mexican beer.  That's not surprising with the Mexican border less than 200 miles south of here.    The public works truck parked on the beach added a touch of irony, with its sign saying, "In the can, not the sand."  I believe most of the rubbish on the beach began on another beach.  I don't think it was jetsam or flotsam.  

The vast, vast majority of the debris was seaweed.  It cluttered the high tide line on the beach.  That, in time, will wash back into the sea.  So will the bottles, the flipflops, the Marlboro package and the Hershey wrapper.  On another day, the beach will appear as it did last week.  Nature, left alone, has a way of dealing with ugliness.  

Do you see the blue bubble on the beach?  That is a blue jellyfish or velalla or "by the wind sailors."  They are members of the jellyfish family and paralyze their prey with stinging tentacles.  They float on the surface of the sea and they go where the wind blows them.  Today the wind blew them ashore.  There are reports of millions of them being blown ashore in other locations.  Annie, wisely, would not pick up the jellyfish you see in the picture.  That was another example of her seeing danger where I did not.  No, I didn't pick it up, but that was my first impulse.

You see the flattened fish in the sand?  I don't know how it happened, but the fish had been run over by a vehicle of some sort.  I wondered how the fish got to the beach road in the first place.  I don't know the answer to that question.  Perhaps, it fell from another vehicle driving on the road.  

We parked the bikes at the campground's dog park while we walked the beach.  Fred will be happy to know that they were locked to the dog park sign with our bike chain, the combination of which is "FRED."  I can't remember the combination of my gym locker, but I will never forget the combination to the bike chain.  

Oh, notice the fireplugs in the dog park.  They are props, of course.  But, the dogs don't seem to know that, or care for that matter.  From a dog's point of view, they are just as useful as a real fireplug.  

Goodnight.