Most days I come home from our beach walk with two sopping wet labradoodles and a handful of litter.
I love walking along what I call the ‘wash up line’ and looking through all the detritus that floats up on the high tides and deposits in a wavy line on the shingle, seeing what goodies (and baddies) have been left and what, if anything the dogs might fancy a nibble of, if I fancy a wrestle.
I’ll have to Google it one day to find out if I’m correct, or, better still, speak to a real person - someone who understands physics better than I, but what fascinates me is how the sea sorts out the various items and deposits them together en masse. I have a theory that it’s because materials of similar densities and masses, materials and air-trapping abilities float, and sink, at a similar rate.
As I walk along, I find wood, planed and flat and once part of a manmade item in one line. Then, further down towards the sea, pieces of tree branches as though they dropped out of the water more quickly than the flat raft-like wood and got their odd shapes stuck into the shingle.
There will also be groups of the same type of shells all together, as well as deposits of cuttlefish bones, seaweed and the plastic ghost net litter that washes up having done who knows what damage to fish and mammals in the sea, ready to trap and hurt our seabirds on the beach.
When I lived within a short train ride to the Thames, I did a lot of foreshore archaeology and mudlarking. I once asked an experienced mudlark why you would find hundreds of Tudor pins or Roman glass beads or shards of ceramic bunched together in the mud of the foreshore. I was told “Like attracts like!”, and I guess that’s good enough, really.
I’m going to be taking my litterpicking sticks to Bognor Regis beach on Sunday 12th May at 10am and I’d like to invite you to bring a bin liner or carrier bag, a pair of disposable gloves and your sense of humour to check out if like really does attract like and collect beach litter with me for about an hour.
Hope to see you there!
Sarah S. x
(PS Please remember in order to mudlark on the foreshore of the Thames you need a licence and to be registered with the PLA)
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