(March 24 2006 continued...) Probably the Whiteweed was torn off the sea floor near Southend Pier and moved eastwards with the wind and tidal current, while the Hornwrack and cuttlebones had come from the open sea and sandbars. What was interesting to notice was that the cuttlebone only appeared where the reeds had stranded and then only in a few places protected in some way from the main current. Those at Westcliff were rather downstream from a projection on the promenade and near where the coast bends back slightly to the north. One from the east side of Bell Wharf in Leigh was at the end of a current along Leigh Creek which could not extend far beyond that point during so low a high tide. Another cuttlebone came from just east of Lynton Road near Thorpe Bay, where the beach turns slightly to face the strong current preventing stranding at South Shoebury and is somewhat more protectected by breakwaters than to the east. Two more were found at the end of this second barren zone. One caught with reeds under the Corporation Pier (not the famous Southend Pier now much obstructed with a fence and barren inside it) and a second on the lee side where the East beach turns slightly to the north again. Two more were found where the East Beach debris normally strands; on the last patch of sand before the amusement park juts out as a projecting barrier of stone. The total number of cuttlebones present in a surveyed strandline of 9.2 km length and a meter of 50 width was therefore 18. Their average shell width was 32 mm (range 23 mm at Leigh to 42 mm at Shoebury, with all anterior ends and all but two posterior ends broken-off). Shells of this size are juveniles of the first winter. It is possible to do a more refined study of second year specimens by counting the chambers added after the narrow winter chambers.

(March 24 2006 continued...) Following the same method that beach yielded ten more cuttlebones from the latest strandline with reeds and an injured gull on it. A dead gull was present with them at Westcliff in December 11, probably onshore storms winds with rain has the same adverse effects on gulls at it does on us. Walking back on the more south-facing part of the same strandline from the coastguard station at Shoeburyness to Bell Wharf at Leigh, one could see a change in the associated biota from bivalve shells in the east (where not even algae were deposited, let alone more buoyant reeds and cuttlebones), to Hornwrack around eastern Southend, to Whiteweed at Leigh. Whiteweed is actually an animal hydroid colony which is termed Sertularia and like the Hornwrack (which is another animal colony, made of bryozoa termed Flustra) sinks in one or two days in sea-water when taken home.

Sepia officinalis shells stranded

March 24 2006

The cold weather ended during the day started by rain with a wind from the east-south-east, contemporaneous with a relatively low high tide at around 6 a.m. G.M.T. On visiting Westcliff beach shortly before noon, the latest of many strandlines of brown algae and gravel ridges was seen to have the additional components of reed debris, whelk egg cases and two small cuttlebones (the same shells used by owners of caged birds, but in this case small specimens of the English species Sepia officinalis L. with marks matching the bills of fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) made far out to sea. This pair of shells were at the same spot below Holland Road in Westcliff, where two were found in December 11 2003 and encouraged me to take the train and collect 50 more from the more exposed East Beach in Shoebury.

"Bird Flu"

March 17, 2006

Part of Chalkwell beach next to the train station is cordoned-off with people in protective clothing looking at it; presumably because a bird corpse had been stranded there in the same spot as the pheasant wing in January. It is just as well that I made my bird feather collection before this bird influenza scare got properly started. It is not a new phenomenon. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 671 C.E. reports "here was a great mortality of birds (producing) a foul stench over both land and sea from the corpses of small and large birds." That was five years after 'a great plague of men' caused the Essex missionary Cedd to die at Lastingham Abbey and the East Saxons to revert to paganism until reconverted by Wilfred. Perhaps the disease had mutated from us to birds in a reversal of the pattern feared at present.(I read later in the paper that they were actually removing graffiti.)