From Starbucks to Stromberg Cove: Swim Day #36

Categories: Environment, Atlantic Ocean, Crazy, Runoff, Sea Life

Feb 8, 2010 03:00 pm 4 Comments

Off Elliot Street in Beverly, Massachusetts sits a bit of urban sprawl: a small shopping plaza that sports a nail salon, a liquor store, a pizza joint, and, of course, a Starbucks.

Out back, past the dumpsters and the employee parking spaces, sits a relatively nondescript and unloved tendril of the Atlantic Ocean. In my quest to swim down the coast, I have made a point of swimming the occasional small tidal waterway like this one.  This is the sort of behavior my friends tease me about (Wow, Mr. Big Ocean Swimmer is paddling around in Beverly Harbor!) but I can't resist.  These neglected fingers of the Atlantic actually have a lot to tell us about the state of the sea.

These pieces of water are threatened by more than cigarette butts and coffee cups.  Storm drains like the one below carry waste from the streets straight into the ocean. Every time it rains, this former salt marsh gets treated to a cocktail of gasoline, diesel, oil, dog poop, lawn fertilizer, windshield washer fluid, and powdered copper and asbestos (from the brake pads of passing vehicles).

This dirty designer cocktail leaches into the ecosystem, messing with the organ systems and habitats of everything from crabs to migrating fish. Four hundred years ago, this area might have boasted a run of Atlantic Sturgeon, which would have used its upper reaches to spawn, and feed on crustaceans, worms and mollusks. Now, a chemical shot of runoff, and the accompanying low levels of dissolved oxygen, limit the animals in sight to a flock of seagulls dumpster-diving for scones and pepperoni.

The sturgeon and other migrating fish that depended on this sliver of salt water are all but gone.

As I make my way down to Stromberg Cove I pause and tread water from time to time, so I can photograph trash, and storm drains.  While these efforts leave me open to more ridicule from my buddies (Are you swimming to D.C. or taking pictures of trash?) they help me get a stronger sense of the coastline.

It's not that trash and storm drains are new to me, it is just that swimming by them brings home the point that everything we humans throw on the ground, ends up in the sea. 

Somehow, I can never quite get over this. 

People often tell me I am crazy to swim through manmade slurries of garbage and stormwater.

And what I want to say is, You know what's really crazy? Dumping all this stuff in the ocean in the first place.

Thanks for reading.

+++

Click here for today's route and water quality map, thoughfully sponsored by Dowley & Company.

Click here to view my personal physiology data.

Please support my swim! Make your donation here.

Thanks!

Tweet This Post

Jen_Changents
February 9, 2010 - 9:19am

The sludge cocktail people drop onto the streets and in parking lots always looks crummy, but when you talk about how it floats down into our oceans it's just plain gross. I think your trash photos help raise awareness about the junk drifting down streets and drain pipes are awesome. If we saw this trash on a pristine beach most people would be shocked. It's also another reminder that it's not just what we dump on the streets, but all the hidden chemicals and toxins in our everyday products! Cheers to organic farming!

kwalsh200
February 9, 2010 - 9:37pm

hey Swain, good job !!!

fballard
February 11, 2010 - 2:59pm

Aloha Chris Swain and Congrats! I suppose you have undertaken both the greatest, most daily rewarding activity of your life(nothing like live fieldwork to make Mr. Murphy a constant companion!)and , evidently from the photos, one of the worst, most disturbing! Out here in Maui I think people might be surprised just how poor our drinking water really is upon close laboratory examination,a fact local friends that do clinical work in the testing have sobered me up with. Our annual precip. rates and tropical isolation do not necessarily correlate with multi-sourced reality. And home water purification filter systems we commonly use locally don't do much for bio/chem intruders in the ppm neighborhoods. Mahalo for extricating yourself and we as well out of "the box" with the truth! I only hope we can run further with your torch....

Atlantic Rising
March 6, 2010 - 3:12pm

Hi Chris, This seems like a really great project. Best of luck for all the swimming - rather you than me. I think the ideas behind your adventure are very interesting and I hope you make the impact you deserve. We are also travelling along the Atlantic coastline - but by land not sea. We are following the one meter contour line, predicted to be the new coastline in 100 years if sea levels continue to rise. We are also creating a network of schools in low lying communities around the edge of the ocean. I wonder if we are visiting any of the same schools? You can see what we are all about at www.atlanticrising.org Good luck and perhaps we will meet you on the way! Lynn

Flag as spam/inappropriate