A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1469 entries
strandline
The strandline is the line of debris left along a beach at the limit of the last high tide: seaweed, driftwood, shells, egg cases, cuttlebone, sea beans, feathers, and whatever else was floating. It shifts with every tide and there are usually several parallel lines up the beach, with the highest marking the spring tides. It is the richest zone on any beach for a walker looking down.
Etymology
Strand is Old English for the shore itself and is the older word, displaced in ordinary use by beach and shore but still current in Scots, in Irish English, and in place names. The verb to strand, meaning to leave something on shore, comes from it.
Notes
The strandline is a habitat rather than a mess. Rotting weed supports sandhoppers, kelp flies, and the beetles that hunt them, and those feed the birds working the tideline, so mechanically cleaning a beach removes the base of the food chain along with the litter. It is also where seeds and driftwood arriving from across an ocean come to rest.