October 10 2006. The highest predicted tide at Chalkwell, not only this year but for several others, was yesterday afternoon at 3.4 m above mean sea level, and both tides on the 8th and the 13.35 G.M.T. tide today were predicted as 3.3 m. Presumably this is due to the unusual size and yellow appearance of the Harvest moon, which was so impressive at the end of last week. Also a quarter of an inch of rain fell locally on October 5. This resulting flash flood and high tides evidently a gravel ridge, capped with rolls of algae concentrated on the west sides of breakwaters, before the highest predicted tide arrived. This ridge did not look much different this morning. It had just gathered more algae, plus a new element, Sea Purslane leaves removed from upper beaches and marches by high tides. It was more instructive to observe much the same floating materials in today’s high tide before it could amalgamate them with less buoyant and older stranded material on the beach. The material actually seen coming in floating with the tide over a studied distance of 1.7 km were two brown oak leaves, 15 conspicuous feathers (mainly gulls up to 320 mm length, but including two of the banded ?Curlew feathers discussed previously of 225 mm length); large rafts of Sea Purslane leaves (Halimione portula coides (L.), which floated for 48.2 days when picked and tested in December 2000) and sea grass (Zosteras),this became more common towards Westcliff than the Sea Purslane presumably coming from Leigh March rather than intertidal sands); much large human wood debris evidently coming from a flooded café selling cockels, but perhaps not directly and a floating building stone discussed below and a few plastic bottles and drink cans. In addition there were a few floating sticks.
Below this level in the sea was a swash zone of non-buoyant material being suspended by the waves and moved on to the beach above even less buoyant strandline material such as stones and open bivalve shells (Mytilus x Mercenaria). The suspended material included one large and one small dead Common Crab (Carcirus), brown algae and other vegetation bound into rolls along the edge of the incoming tide, one or two brown leaves of genera other than oak, a cone of Pinus nigra and a cultivated apple. Neither of these floated when taken home and tested in more static seawater, although they appeared to do so due to the motion of the waves. Apples but not pine cones were also conspicuous on the gravel ridge made recently, as was the building stone debris. They are therefore reviewed here.
At first sight one assumes the brown and deplorable state of the apple is due to the work of the sea, and seabirds, while it was gradually becoming non-buoyant on the intertidal mudflats. However, both the pitting and brown to black external colouration matches an apple of the same size and shape picked from the wet soil inland today. They even turned brown when kept dry and away from Magpies, after a few days indoors; while these placed directly in seawater look unaltered and can float well (as do the brown previously decayed type). The drifted apple had an equatorial diameter of 55 mm and a height diameter of 42mm, on a short stalk. One side was black and crushed, and corresponded to the bruised zone caused by landing inland. Stranding in the swash before collection produced radial cracks, which lost air when refloated. The only significant differences between the two brown and pecked apples were seen after cutting in half. The stranded one had flesh of the same orange colour, which was firmer and non-buoyant in seawater, and the core lacked seeds. It was not clear why the seeds were missing although insect borings along the stem might have been missed in such a decayed structure. Clearly the stranded apple was a red to yellow variety of Malus domestica Borkhausen which is unlikely to have been sold to the English public in that state and probably came from rejected garden waste, or in a flash flood (they do float in tap water for over a day even when brown and from wet soil). Obviously the many apples seen on Southend beaches earlier in the year have just been rejected from lunch boxes, being out of season and quite undecayed. Tested Crab Apples float much less well and probably cannot reach the sea in rivers at all (see also photographs taken October 7th).
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