Beach combing

What is more relaxing than just sitting on a beach,
... watching the waves play and getting enraptured by the sound they make ...
... njoying sunrises or sunsets ...
... watching the little ones explore the "big" water ...
... or spotting sandcastles being built ...
Soon all the tracks in the sand will reluctantly be blurred by the water and singular things will be washed ashore that wait for you to be found. The young and old are lured to rummage in the sand.
 
Favourite findings are seashells, stones and fossils, but there is more to discover. Watch out for birds or other small animals and look for special plants.

Mussels
Because of a lower salinity of the water the Baltic Sea mussels are smaller and thinner specimen than elsewhere and they do not occur in such great numbers.

Cockles - Cerastoderma edule

shape: distinctively ribbed, heart-shaped (viewed from the side)
colour: white, yellowish
habitat: live 1-3 cm deep in the seabed
 
Young cockles are on the menu for birds and fishes, and they are said to be edible and very palatable even to us.

Blue Mussels - Mytilus edulis

shape: roughly triangular in outline
colour: blue-black or brownish, pearl-coloured shiny
size: up to 15 cm possible, usually 5-8 cm
habitat:
live on the seabed, form dense mussel beds,
with their strong byssal threads they adhere to surfaces, e.g. posts
befestigt sich mit starken Byssusfäden am Untergrund
 
feed on small plankton (microscopic animals and plants).
Mussels are a "living filter". They are able to filter more than a litre of water per hour. Due to this the sea water is cleaned from many pollutants.
Predatory enemies are birds, crayfishes and fishes.

Soft-shell clams - Mya arenaria

peculiarity: with increasing age the shell halves gape apart by the growth of the shell content
colour: white
size:up to 8 cm
habitat:
live up to 30 cm below the seabed
introduced from America
 
Adult soft-shell clams have siphons that long that they cannot draw them in completely. Large examples that have been washed up by sea currents cannot dig themselves into the seabed again.

Baltic Macomas - Macoma balthica

shape: almost triangular, oval shell
colour: rose, yellowish or bluish
size: up to 3 cm
habitat: live 5 cm below the seabed

Stones

Flint

colour: black and white in colour
 
Flint was used for the manufacture of tools in the Stone Age.
When struck together, a flint edge will generate sparks and a burning smell.

"Hühnergott"

The "Hühnergott" is a perforated stone. In earlier times these stones were put into chicken nests to increase the hens` well being and to stimulate egg production.
 
Lucky charm; small stones are worn on a leather necklace as a talisman. Or you take a stone into your closed hand, you spin around and secretly wish something.

The fine sand on the beach

colour: creamy white, colourless
shape: mooth and a round form
 
How was the fine beach sand created?
The sand consists of quartz which is of extreme hardness. Quartz is produced when magmatic rock stratum is formed (magma = melted minerals from the earth`s nucleus). This material contains among others small quartz crystals which are exposed in the erosion process. These weather-resistant particles are transported to the sea by natural elements. After some time these particles become smooth and round due to the water`s polishing effect.
The regional sand originates from glacial sediments which can be found here on the local shoreline. Due to the erosion at the steep coasts large amounts of sand are deposited in the sea. This sand will be polished and redeposited on our beaches.

Fossil Finfings

Amber - "The Gold of the Seas"

colour: whitish-light and yellow, golden yellow to reddish brown or black
 
Amber is fossilized tree resin from about 40 – 50 million years ago, amber can also contain animal or plant inclusions. Since Stone Age time amber has been used as a gemstone, moreover it was used as an object for trade.
 
Today we know more than 300 types of amber. Some examples are estimated as being one 100 million years old, some even older. The most common type is the Baltic amber. It was formed in the brown coal period, when the Baltic region was still covered with subtropical pine forests. The „amber-pine” provided the resin for the Baltic amber.
Even today with a little luck you can find small pieces of amber along the beaches of the Darss and Zingst peninsula, depending upon the wind direction, season and sea current. These small pieces have been torn from the seabed, are cast up by the waves and deposited on the beach. Especially after storms they can be found among washed up sea weed, cockles and mussels.
 
How to distinguish amber from a very similar looking stone or a polished yellow glass shard?

1. 1.Amber is flammable – of course nobody wants to burn their "treasure"!
2. 1.If you rub it with wool, amber will be electromagnetically charged and magnetically attracts little scraps of paper. – This only works with bigger pieces of amber.
3. 1.There is a test with common salt. Add 3 spoons of salt to 1/4 litre of water, stir it up and put the amber into the solution. Due to the amber`s lower density it will float – stones or glass will sink.
4. 1.And there is a bite test. – Amber has a low hardness. The biting sensations of a piece of amber and a stone are very different. - Caution – This test is not recommended especially on the Isle of Usedom you might find phosphor pieces of firebombs from World War II. You might confuse them with real amber. Therefore please place your finds in a glass jar.
   
5. 1.Amber is lighter than many other materials.

"Donnerkeile" - Belemnites

shape: cylindrical - tapering
colour: yellowish brown
 
Belemnites are the fossilized rears of belemnoids` skeletons, an ancient form of squids. Almost the whole order of belemnoids became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period.
 
Lying in soft sediments many of these belemnites are washed up after squalls. The superstition was that people believed belemnites were slammed to earth by the God of Thunder. Belemnites were put under the roofs to protect the houses from being hit by lightning. It was said that they even could provide protection against lumbago if people carried a belemnite with them.

Fossilized sea urchins

shape: round, heart- or disc-shaped
 
classification: echinoderms
 
Mostly only flint stone cores are found. These are nothing else but the urchin`s shells filled with flintstone. The calcareous form is generally erased by the water so that only the solid stone core remains.

Animals

Common barnacles - Semibalanus balanoides

Age: 2-5 years
size: grow up to 15 mm
habitat: adhere to rocks
classification: cirripedia barnacles
 
Larva floats with plankton. It "settles" at a certain stage of development and creates calcareous plates for its protection. Their walls have 4 - 6 wall plates which become larger on the lower edge by calcification. You can determine the different regional species of barnacles only from the shape of their plates. For food very small plankton is filtered from the seawater by extending feathery cirri into the water.
Although cirripedia barnacles are hermaphrodites they cannot fertilise themselves, but they need other barnacles for reproduction.
Predatory enemies include crayfish, sea urchins and predatory snails.

Plants

Bladderwrack - Fucus vesiculosus

size: 10 - 30 cm long
colour: green to brown
classification: brown algae
 
fronds have air bladders, which:
- aid the position of the plant in water that is to stand in an upright position
- enable the plant to drift across the sea
 
The plants grow their air bladders in spring. The number of sections without bladders tells the age of the plant. In summer you can find bladders with an uneven surface and a slimy content on the plant’s end. They contain the gamete.

Red algae - Rhodophyta

colour: red brown to purple
shape: fine-veined
 
The green of the leaves is covered by reddish phycobilin pigments.

Seagrass

We distinguish between small and large seagrass.
size: leaves 1mm / 3 mm
colour: dark green / light green
 
Seagrass is the only flowering plant in the Baltic Sea.
In earlier days seagrass washed up to the beach was used to fill mattresses with.

Sea Holly - Eryngium maritimum L.

Image Sea Holly: Herr H.-J. Wessels Ostseeheilbad Zingst
colour: pale green or blue-green leaves
shape: 20 - 60 cm, highly branched, thistle-like, prickly leaves
flowers: June to August, spherical heads surrounded by bracts, perennial
 
is a protected species, umbel

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