That white line at the tideline looked like seafoam from five feet away. It wasn't. We crouched down and it was polystyrene beads — the remains of a buoy that had been fragmenting in place, directly at the waterline, probably for years. Here's the thing about EPS foam buoys that doesn't come up much: they don't break down the way most plastic does. They don't wait for a storm or a distant ocean gyre. The foam crumbles in the wave action, right where it sits — aquaculture buoys, lobster trap floats, foam dock hardware. The beads enter the water column almost immediately. By the time we show up with bags, the bulk of what was lost is already gone, too small to weigh. That's why it almost never shows up in haul-weight totals. The metric misses it. You can have a productive cleanup on a polystyrene-heavy beach and the report looks thin. Vermont passed a foam dock restriction in 2025. A few other coastal states are in early review. The legislators are working from the same mechanism we're watching on the shoreline — continuous fragmentation at the source, not a single pollution event. If you're near a tidal estuary, look for the white-flecked wrack line. It doesn't photograph like a ghost net or a tangled six-pack ring. It looks like snow, or like someone tracked in packing material. Walk the line and you'll find it. What estuary or tidal shoreline are you closest to? #polystyrene #marinedebris #tidecleanup #microplastics #coastalcleanup