Beaches

I love walking on the beach. Yesterday we drove north on the Okinawa Expressway to Sea Glass Beach on the Pacific coast near Toyohara. It was the first time Mary had driven this route or more than 60kmh since she’s live here, but we wanted to get to the beach before the rain moved in. Surface streets are more interesting but slow going.

Bella at Sea Glass Beach  

The Pacific beaches have some little clams; almost no plastic which I assume is caught in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Texas-sized collection of trash floating in the ocean; rocks; and sea glass. I haven’t seen sea glass in ages which I attribute to all those plastic bottles floating around rather than the beer and liquor bottles everyone used to throw into the ocean.

The beach was covered in clear and brown sea glass with just a little green. Mary hoped to find a marble like other people have claimed. I can’t imagine a piece of glass being shaped into a sphere. Maybe one of the thousands of containers that fall off ships each year had marbles, and they were tossed up on shore. For several years we attended the Seabean Symposium in Cocoa Beach, FL. One of the experts was US oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who tracks currents using debris from containers. Most famous were the LEGOs which went down in the Atlantic and were found for years along European and Florida coasts. Other newsworthy cargos were plastic ducks/turtles/beavers making their way through the Arctic Ocean and thousand of athletic shoes washing up in Alaska. I always keep my eyes out for LEGOs and toys, sneakers not so much.

Crab With Little Squid  

When we found a piece of glass with sharp edges, we pitched it back into the waves to have another go. No one swims at this beach so I didn’t worry about anyone getting cut. Mary spotted a little plastic box floating right at the water’s edge. I caught it and opened it, and I don’t know who was more surprised, me or the crab inside. I put the box back in the waves in case the little squid also inside was still alive. If not, the crab has lunch.

It didn’t take long for us to collect as much sea glass as we were interested in. I may try to drill holes in several pieces so I can hang them as light catchers. More likely I’ll keep a few pieces and put them in the glass bowl with the mangrove seeds I’m growing at home.

I prefer looking for shells. The wind has been blowing out of the northwest, so if the weather isn’t too bad tomorrow, we will get up early and drive north, this time to one of the East China Sea beaches on the west coast and see what the waves have washed in.