Personal plastic items for adults and children are everyday beach finds. Lighters and toothbrushes are more common than you might think. Forgotten toys are run-of-the-mill.
Fishing gear lost at sea washes ashore too. Plastic buoys, trawl floats, hagfish trap funnels, and trap door clips all end up on the beach.
Shotgun shell wads and fragments of broken crates are wrack line staples.
At sea or on the beach, plastic items eventually degrade into fragments that make for a dirty drift. However, there are a few nurdles in the left panel below—they aren’t fragments. Instead, they’re small round pellets used worldwide to produce plastic products. Some of them, inevitably, make their way to the beach after spills.
theoutershores 
Whatever did we do before we ‘discovered’ plastic? What a mess! 🥴
You’re Right. To come upon a drift line full of tiny plastic fragments on an otherwise beautiful shore is dissapointing.
I love the almost buried turtle photo. These are all wonderful plastic items for this week. 😀
The turtle is cute for sure. Some of the drifted items are a curiosity. They arrive from all around the world, so they interest me quite a bit. But I don’t care for nurdles and small plastic fragments in the drift. Thanks, Cee, for a great challenge.
It is so very sad to see all the trash and junk on the beaches. It breaks my heart. I do agree with Cee though, the little turtle is kind of cute. 🐢 But the rest… 💔
The worst for me are the nurdles and small plastic fragments. Drifted floats and bottles from around the world hold my interest, especially when I can unravel their stories. But in the end, it’s all trash. There is so much of it, Lisa, I agree; it’s hard not to dispair. Thanks for taking a look at my take on plastic beach trash.
My brother is a retired marine biologist in Alaska. He has shown me all the trash he’s picked up off the beaches. In fact, he’s been doing some documenting. He’s also gotten creative with some of it 😊
It’s depressing, isn’t it? I recently spent an hour or so cleaning an apparently ‘clean beach’, and amassed a huge amount of plastic mini-chips, straws, detritus of every kind and colour. The fact that it wasn’t at first visible almost made it worse.
I participated in a short beach clean up once and had pretty much the same experience as you describe. We were limited to 15 minutes and though the beach looked clean, it was amazing how much human-generated debris we found.
Hi Steve, HGT – human generated trash is a plague on our ocean and beaches. With two beagles now, I am unable to gather up the refuse I see as I walk the wrack line, and it pains me. When the dogs and I have figured out a routine, I’ll get back to filling large bags with HGT. Thanks for keeping connected with my blog!!!