Beachcomber Alert
Story by John Vonderlin
Email John: [email protected]
[Below: Curtis Ebbesmeyer’s book, “Flotsametrics and the Floating World”]
Hi Curt 
This is my goggle and snorkel collection.
While the vast majority of objects in most of my non-buoyant collections are gathered at Neptune’s Vomitorium, this collection is one of the exceptions. A highly specific and much more publicly accessible vomitorium about a mile away has produced a sizable percentage of this collection. I say highly specific, in that it generally has just three types of items; swim things (goggles, snorkels, and fins) Aerobie Rings, and tires or tire parts. I’ll detail this oddity in a future posting.
The items in this collection provided some of the first insights that these things were not from local sources. I knew that because the coastal waters hereabouts is brutal. While the rare kayaker, besides ourselves, might be seen along the thirty mile stretch we haunt, and a couple of spots are used by board or kite surfers, I’ve only seen two people go snorkeling in five years.
The water is usually in the low fifties and even on a summer day, if the fog is thick, the air temperature may not be much higher. Add the common rip currents, rocky coast, and unpredictable surf, and there would have to be a lot of aggravated child abuse going on locally, given the quantity of children’s masks in the collection. The nearest beaches populated by children are just south of Half Moon Bay, outside of my collection area. They are sandy, protected by Pillar Point from the worst surf, and slightly warmer because of their shallow waters. I wrote a posting entitled “J’acuse,” about this realization, that I’ll send when I find it. Enjoy. John
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Adds John:
Curt is one of my “heroes.” I’ve been meaning to communicate with him for years and finally did so last week. He loves my Marine Debris stuff and is going to include it in his Newsletters for the next few years. As I suspected, non-buoyant debris, as produced by “Neptune’s Vomitorium,” is an unknown phenomena. If it wasn’t, this guy would know about it. I’m hoping his worldwide exposure will connect me to other people who are knowledgeable about it.