Beach-combing
8th September 2008, Monday
The strong winds have detached large rafts of wrack, which drift as dark masses upon the waves, before getting thrown up onto the shingle. A conspicuous new arrival is Thongweed Himanthalia elongata.
It lies sometimes tangled with other seaweeds. In the picture below, you can also see Knotted WrackAscophyllum nodosum (the long one with egg-shaped bladders), Toothed Wrack Fucus serratus (the one with a saw-like edge) and Bladder Wrack Fucus vesiculosus (the branched one with paired bladders).
Hastings played its part in the mid-Victorian craze for collecting sea-weeds when Margaret Gatty, a Yorkshire parson’s wife, came down to convalesce in 1848, following the birth of her seventh child. Her doctor suggested the pastime which was to become her over-riding passion, culminating in her 1863 volume “British Seaweeds”. She has even has a species named in her honour: Gattia spectabilis, a marine worm.