Day 79

After another breakfast at the Natchez Coffee Shop I was packed and ready to paddle. As I loaded the canoe I noticed the river was up about a foot overnight. I took a quick look at the river forecast and I saw the river was going to continue to go up over the next week. I was pleased to have an overcast sky, cool temps, good current and a stiff breeze from out of the north. The paddling was easy and I made good time despite having to pull over a couple of times to let barges pass. Around lunch I paddled over to a section of shore that I saw had a lot of trash. I spent about an hour picking up buckets, a milk crate, part of an old fishing net, and lots of plastic bottles. Back on the river  I used my tent rain fly to make a sail. I was able to make about eight free miles by adjusting my make shift sail to capture the strong north wind. Towards late afternoon the wind turned against me and slowly my progress to a crawl. Most of the vary large gently slopping sandbars are now back under water changing the look and feel of the river. I pulled up onto the bottom end of one shorter sandbars around five. I spent a hour walking the sand bar and collecting trash. I found two milk crates, a chewed up duck decoy, a headlight assembly, plastic bottles, plastic cigar tips, a bleach jug, two milk jugs, a five gallon bucket. Much of the plastic trash that enters up river has been broken down into hundreds of small pieces mixed in the sand, up and down every sandbar. Towards the end of my walk I found the remains of a dried out gulf sturgeon. The sturgeon is a species that is heavily managed because it is on the road to recovery after years of declining stocks. The fish was about a foot and half long and it had a plastic ring around its body behind the gill plates. The ring was about five inches around and it had eventually killed the fish as he grew. It was a sobering reminder that plastic trash kills.