(March 29, 2006 continued….) In summer it is more difficult to trace a strandline since there is a tendency for people to sit on it during dry weather when such surveys are easier to do. I did the whole route on June 21 2002 when a national sporting contest cleared the more crowded areas of the beach around Southend. In that case the predicted tidal level was 2.4 m O.D. and the most interesting finds were spinose sea-urchins of the genus Echinocardium and a non-spinose regular sea-urchin Psammechinus miliaris (latter stranded intact near Half Way House public house and found to float for 2.4 days when kept in seawater since it was discovered there). Echinocardium with some spines attached and so freshly stranded that they attracted the interest of flies where found today (March 29) tossed on the reeds above a gravel ridge cut by the tide along the open South Shoebury Common coastline. This also featured a cabin cruiser stranded parallel to and just below the new cliff of gravel, and a less intact smaller boat thrown with piles of the reeds under beach huts at Thorpe Bay. The reeds had evidently been transported to this area by the south and west breeze which had persisted since the last visit in which this area was devoid of reeds at all levels of the beach. Elsewhere one can imagine that the reeds had merely been reworked from the lower strandlines as the tide rose through the week, cleaning the lower sands of all their buoyant materials. However, on returning to Chalkwell Station with the tide now gone far out and the sun still not set, there was a new spread of green reeds, plastic bottles and the usual new dead bird on the lower part of the beach bordering on the mudflats.