October 16, 2019

by drplasticpicker

I had adventures this morning! Drplasticpicker was up before sunrise and I met a wondrous sight. I try to clean at the ocean’s edge and along the sand cliffs, and sometimes I’ll pick ocean plastic on the main beach. I’ve seen sand being brought it to rebuild the beach, but wondered how the beach itself was cleaned? Now, I have seen it with my own eyes! It is cleaned by the Surf Rake, a tractor-towed beach cleaner.

The Surf Rake has a C curved moldboard that levels the sand and ensures an even surface for cleaning. The following information is summarized from a website hbarber.com. The stainless steel tines on a triangular shaped conveyer belt rake the debris from the sand. The sand and debris get separated off the deflector moldboard, and the debris moves up the conveyer and is deposited in the back hopper. The sand also filters back onto the beach through perforations in the conveyer belt. The refuse can stack as high as 9 feet at the back of the Surf Rake! Wow. That is amazing!

It was excited to see the Surf Rake in action. Here are some haunting images.

This morning, I did go down to the sand to pick up ocean bound plastic. The freshly raked sand was beautiful, just like fresh snow.

Like the first snowfall my freshman year of college in the Boston area, I gingerly marked the pristine sand with my footsteps.

Even with the power of the Surf Rake, there was still plenty of ocean bound plastic to gather. The Surf Rake and drplasticpicker, better together.