SeaHow – Landscape to Seascape
The recent stormy weather lashed the North Aberdeenshire coast where SeeHow is based. The power of the sea is hard to imagine. I remember learning in a geography lesson many years ago that a large storm wave can generate an impact force of 4,000lb per square inch – 1,800 kilos per 6cm2 approximately. (I recently found a reference to the power of storm waves in my local aquarium which supports the figure from my geography lesson - apparently they can generate the same force as driving a car at 140kph into a brick wall!). It is hardly surprising that all around the coast there are neglected crumbling stone ruins, hinting at some forgotten past, succumbing to the power of the sea.
The above photo shows Largo Pier in Fife – fully functional only 20 years ago, but now disappearing before our eyes. Nearby, the massive stone salt harbour has completely vanished
At the mouth of the River Deveron, close to SeeHow’s home, there used to be wharfs and sheds for boats and equipment, extending part-way across the estuary from the Macduff side of the river. They were built upon a natural bank that separated safe moorings on one side from the sea on the other side. There are ancient maps showing schooners drawn on the safe-mooring side. The whole complex was completely swept away in a super-storm, leaving the open sandy estuary that can be seen today. It is hard to believe that the old maps could be true, such is the scale of change. Against the eastern side of the estuary, huge but shattered pieces of reinforced concrete can be seen that once formed part of later sea-defences. Similar remains can be seen in many places along this section of coast, indicating the complex and intimate connections between the sea and the local communities. Life was tough and fraught with danger, yet this was accepted and helped to forge the character of the people who lived there.
Watercolour by a local artist, showing a fisherman at work preparing equipment - author’s collection
Even stone structures, no matter how carefully built, will eventually disintegrate under the relentless pounding of the waves if they are not constantly maintained, just as cliffs continue to be eroded around our coasts. Fortunately, stone is broken into relatively harmless fragments, as are shells, to become part of the sands and gravels that we see everywhere. Stone does not pollute or affect biodiversity as it is incorporated back into the natural environment. But it is now largely a building material of the past. Other everyday materials from the past included wood, iron, cotton, leather, wool, pottery, ceramics and early glass. Many of these materials would often be reused / repurposed and had long lives. Although some of the historic manufacturing processes were polluting (lead-poisoning was common, as an example), in general these were materials that once discarded, slowly dissolved into the past without leaving us in environmental trouble. How things have now changed! I was reminded of this during a walk around a nearby rocky cove where the recent storms have thrown up huge churns of seaweed, torn from the seafloor. Walking across this slippery pile for a closer look, I began to see pieces of colourful plastics – fragments of fishing nets; broken pieces of plastic bottles; random shapes in reds, blues, yellows and greens – all mixed into the rolled masses of seaweed.
Pieces of assorted plastic collected from a small area where flotsam and jetsam tend to be gathered by the tidal flows.
Bizarrely, I also began to discover rubber and plastic pieces of shoes – more and more of them as my eye began to spot the unique man-made shapes amongst the kelp fronds and the beach stones. They were of every type – whole plastic shoes; pieces of plastic shoes; shoe liners, women’s shoes with heels; soles of shoes of every description including one or two pieces made from decaying leather. I was so shocked by the amount of plastic waste and other human detritus, all within an area perhaps 25m by 10m, that I started to gather the pieces together – to make separate piles. The results, collected in no more than 20 minutes, can be seen in the photos. Even here, in the north of Scotland, the pollution is frightening. What are we doing to our world?
An astonishing number of shoe parts found amongst the seaweed
Microplastics are regularly in the news these days. They have been found in the guts of creatures around the world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. They are now inside all of us too – ingested through eating seafood, simply breathing in the air and from food contaminated by plastic packaging, as examples. The photo below shows the disintegration process of bottles that we throw away in their millions – again collected from the same area of beach. The plastic pieces are abraded on the rocks and eventually disappear from sight – out of sight, out of mind – but they are still there, quietly entering the food-chain as bite-sized little pieces consumed by micro-organisms and smaller marine life. These, in turn, are consumed by bigger creatures which eventually end up being consumed by us – a sort of unvirtuous circle. Gaia getting her own back perhaps!
Just a few pieces of familiar plastic bottles in various states of disintegration
Lost ropes and fishing nets are found all around our coast too, but in particular they are found in huge quantities washed up on the beaches of many islands on the West Coast of Scotland! The company, ‘Ocean Plastic Pots’, is making an effort to gather and repurpose the plastic used to create these colourful nets, by turning it into colourful plant-pots and many other useful items (worth checking out - @ocean.plastic.pots). Here on the Aberdeenshire coast there are plenty of colourful fishing net fragments mixed in amongst the seaweed, unfortunately already on their way to becoming microplastics. School children used to attend beach-cleaning walks, collecting the plastic and other rubbish, but the number of dead seabirds on the beaches at the moment has put a temporary stop to this and plastic levels are building up once again. We will all need to lend a hand to keep the problem in check and protect our wildlife. In amongst the seaweed I found a crushed lobster creel. Lobster fishing in the area provides an income for a number of local boats from the villages along the coast, so it is not surprising that some creels occasionally break loose in heavy weather. Although still pollution, they are few and far between. Also, they are often gathered by walkers and repurposed to become garden features for plants rather than traps for defenceless lobsters.
A modern plastic lobster creel, crushed under the weight of rocks, sand and seaweed
SeeHow is an optimistic product. It is about improving our futures. It helps users to plan their gardens for year-round colour and structure and, with the right plant choices, opportunities for biodiversity can also be improved. But while thinking about our own gardens, we should not neglect our local beaches, rivers, woodlands, roadside verges and commons. In the end, our gardens and the surrounding natural world are all one.
Happy Gardening!
The above Text and all Photographs are copyright of Wincenty (Wicek) Sosna. Please contact SeeHow for permission to reproduce in any way, in part or as the complete text.