(March 29, 2006 continued...) This extended to Leigh at around 1.5 m O.D., where the main evidence of the actual strandline was an older pile of reeds nearly at the road level in the protected gulley on the east side of Bell Wharf. These older reeds were virtually absent from the high beach gravels between Lynton Road and Southend Pier and concentrated on the west side of the Casino and various breakwaters at South Shoebury. It would seem likely that the reeds come from the northern marshland around Canvey Island when the tide is high enough and that they cannot reach even the adjacent Leigh to Chalkwell station beach before the tide has ebbed for several hours. Presumably during the next tide, of any level, they will shift eastwards to Shoebury, particularly if the wind was from the south and west as it was on March 29 and the day before. Reeds float well but the bitten cuttlebones refloated in seawater on March 24 had sunk by 22:00 hrs GMT on March 30.

There were only two finds of new cuttlebones on the March 29 strandline-one on Shoebury East Beach where the wind was blowing parallel to the beach and one just east of Warwick Road, about 250 m west of the previous Lynton Road find in Thorpe Bay. This was roughly where the reeds start to thin out westwards on March 29 and eastwards on March 24. Using a compass, which I had taken this time since I expected that cuttlebones might be seen, one could determine that the narrower (posterior) end of the dorsal-up shell was pointing 155° east of magnetic north (S.S.E.) where the reeds and brown algae defined a strandline trending 110° east of magnetic north (true north is about 2 degrees east of magnetic north locally at present). The shell had a width of 29 mm and a preserved length of 55 mm and the one from Shoebury 42 mm and 82 mm.