A holidaymaker has been ordered to return a bag of pebbles to the Cornish beach they were taken from, or pay a £1,000 fine. This is troubling. When I put on my coat this morning – not worn since a trip to the seaside – I found in the pocket one piece of quartzite, two sandstone pebbles and a battered whelk shell. (It was the coat I wore for this article.) I hadn’t realised I was a “pebble plunderer”; I thought I just liked picking up the odd stone. So is there a way to beachcomb legally and ethically?
Check local bylaws
Many UK councils have passed bylaws under the Coast Protection Act 1949 to ban the removal of materials from beaches. It is illegal to take stones from Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan famously returned his – Budleigh Salterton, St Gennys in Cornwall (where the offending holidaymaker had bagged their haul) and countless others.
Collect sea glass
These broken and worn fragments from glass beach buoys and bottles and other historic matter look beautiful. “It is litter,” says Steve Trewhella, author of The Essential Guide to Beachcombing, who has a couple of jars of sea glass at home. “Unless the landowner has stipulated that nothing is to be removed from the beach.” As it isn’t a natural component of the beach, you are technically removing debris.
Leave driftwood alone
The trend for making things from driftwood is damaging the habitats for coastal insect life. “All I see on Facebook is people with a wheelbarrow of driftwood,” says Trewhella, who believes he could find more living species in a pile of driftwood than in a rotten log in an ancient forest. Leave driftwood in place for the benefit of the “mites and springtails and weeny things” that make it their home.
Exercise restraint
Officially, the Marine Conservation Society advises beachgoers to “leave only footprints and take only photos”. In reality, however, there is a view that if a person takes the odd pebble or empty seashell (from a beach that doesn’t stipulate they must not be removed), no great harm will ensue. People love beach finds for good reasons. A pebble can bring luck and solace. A shell brings the sea closer, even if home is miles from the coast. And a fossil found in childhood can bring a lifelong interest in marine conservation. Be selective and considerate.
Take plastic
John Hourston, founder of Blue Planet society, a pressure group campaigning to protect the world’s oceans, has seen people shovelling stones into the backs of pick-ups even during breeding season for terns and oystercatchers. “If you find a favourite stone, you can pick it up,” he concedes. But instead he suggests taking plastic. “If everybody took one piece of plastic away with them, we would really start tackling the problem.” Perhaps a bit of plastic offsetting could balance out the occasional pebble.
