April 3 2006. The beach walk was repeated during and after the quarter to five pm (British summer Time) tide of 2.5 m O.D. predicted altitude. At Shoebury East Beach, as elsewhere, the tides over the weekend had added another gravel ridge capped by a reed-dominated strandline, below the previously examined one with cuttlebones (three more being found there, but not elsewhere where the reeds still resemble piles of hay in most places). The new and relatively sparse strandline was formed by waves breaking during a gentle, warm, dry westerly breeze, producing a large human population by sunset and stranding partly eaten apples and cucumbers slices. More generally there were reeds which had been out of the marsh for some days; being smaller and bound together by more common brown algae like those ’floral tributes’ seen by the roadside after accidents. Driftwood and leaves were more common, or at least more conspicuous, than before. Probably the leaves were washed into the sea the day before when the westerly rain squalls had roughly coincided with the relatively low predicted tide around 4 p.m. That rain may have also helped to cut the two reed bands into a vertical sand cliff near Lynton Road in Thorpe Bay. The base of it was far above the level of the new strandline there. The only place where fresh, unbound and larger reed debris were present in this new lower strandline was about 1.0 km east of Chalkwell Station (near the Westcliff Toilets). To the west of that spot the new strandline was hardly visible at all. In the east, half a coconut was stranded like a boat in Thorpe Bay (below Tyrone Road) and spinose Echinocardium were seen again in South Shoebury.

An interesting find was of a sliced but otherwise intact coconut stranded concave-up like a boat on the sand of the new strandline in Thorpe Bay below Tyrone road. It could not have been broken on the seawall there, as even the two old hayfield strandlines did not reach it. It also could not have come far before enough water would have entered the concavity of the white and locally bird-pecked endosperm flesh to sink it. In a static subsequent test it sank within four hours by water leaking around the edge of the fractured nut wall and straight away in the concave down orientation likely to be soon produced by waves today. I have seen coconuts floating like boats before at Southend and imagine that they sink on to the mudflats soon after being split on impact with the sea wall pier, or breakwaters. Then having been pecked at for one tidal cycle they can come back in as hemispherical boats to strand.

I use to think that local humans put them into the sea at Southend during picnics, but this is unlikely since they would presumably then eat at least part of the endosperm flesh having gone to the trouble of breaking the top off (which is not easy unless you go to the seaside with a machete and so run the risk of arrest on the train’s new detectors for weapons etc.). It is true that both half-eaten apples and slice cucumber were on the new strandline, but that is more easily understood as overfeeding in lunch boxes. Probably the coconuts are put into the sea as part of Hindu rituals, perhaps in London canals far away? It would be interesting to relate their dispersal to particular dates and modes of preservation when they start their journey .