The Sea Weed Wars

Jane Darke

Land and sea each shape the other. The dead fish floating into sediment becomes rock over millennia. The rock is pushed up forming land. This rock gives way as waves pound it to sand. Clouds form over sea and drop their load on shore. In narrow valleys rain water carrying soil slides down and out, settles on the ocean floor as sediment, the minerals sustaining life. A fish grows and dies, is covered over, becomes rock. And the place between, where all is shifting is the beach.

An urban beach is often managed. If sand is lost, replace it or fence it in. If there’s seaweed remove it. If the shore is giving way then build defences. Do what’s necessary to keep it working for you. Do what you can to stop it changing. But a natural beach is a place in constant transformation. Sand moves in and out with the seasons. Sand banks build and break down, dunes rise and fall in. Rain can scour a stream bed in an hour and the strandline shifts up and down the bay as the tides move from spring to neap and back throughout the fazes of the moon. I live on a rural beach and confrontation is familiar. This dynamic environment is sustained by a forest of kelp off shore. I fought to keep the seaweed on the beach.

There was a tradition of seaweed use for fertilizer in the past but this was removed by fork with a horse and cart and a lot was left. The Tidy Britain and The Blue flag Awards for beaches decided that seaweed was rubbish and should be removed whole sale. Councils in Britain wanted to comply. For five years North Cornwall District Council raked the beach where I live. Every morning the sand was left in furrows made by a machine. The litter was buried beneath the sand. The glass was broken up. Shit from many dogs was spread throughout so no one could avoid it. In the first year every sand hopper disappeared, a million creatures that evolved here, navigating up and down this North West facing beach by sun and moon. At high tide bass, grey mullet and sea trout had fed on them. The sand hoppers devoured seaweed as it broke down. Seaweed rots and glues a beach together; the piles weight down the sand, remove it and the sand will blow away. The nutrients from seaweed feeds ‘sea couch’, a ‘pioneer species’ which prepares the way for marram grass, the dune builder.

We brought this loss to the council’s attention. Over months, we gathered information, sought expert opinion and passed it on. They held a seminar, brought in experts on dune formation and detritivores, and a man from the Tidy Britain group. He argued for seaweed removal but his case was weak.

The council decided this beach and one other should be hand picked.

They had a contract with three years to run with the man who owned the rake. He didn’t want to stop, raking was easier for him and hand picking is a cheaper system. So he didn’t clean it well to make a case for raking. I started to clean the beach by hand to show it could be done effectively. A load of weed washed in. It was fresh weed, ripped off the rocks near by, as it always is. Its clean, the only rubbish that comes with it is broken plastic water bottles that float low in the sea so get caught up in the kelp. I picked this out. The shop owner who feared a loss in trade insisted the contractor rake it. That evening I stood my ground against a tractor with front loader, on the strandline. He moved round me and tried to fill his bucket, I stood on that weed. He reversed, moved to another pile, I stood on that. We kept going for some time like this. A crazy dance but it was serious; he wouldn’t stop to speak, he was angry and so was I. From this day on the residents of the bay have been divided.

The story reached the local press. Then an article in the Daily Telegraph labelled me ‘Environmentalist’ a very dirty word ten years ago. National TV phoned me ‘‘Would I appear on ‘Neighbours from Hell’. I said no, that I liked living here and wanted to stay. We kept the pressure on. After a year the contractor subcontracted to a farmer, who subcontracted to me. I was now paid to clean the beach by hand. The beach was spotless. We started to advocate a system where a local individual cleaned every beach with support and the council would educate beach users about this fragile place.

The Council started The Beach Ranger Service. I applied for the job of Warden for this beach. There are twelve of us in all, for twelve beaches. The rangers collect the bags of rubbish and take them to the depot, they also visit schools.

When the next load of weed washed in traders and residents, who didn’t seem to want to understand beach process, tried burning it with paraffin. Piles of weed trailed acrid smoke. It wouldn’t burn. At the height of the Seaweed Wars the shop keeper, who lives next door, had a sign on his counter. ‘If you want sea weed removed phone this number’. Some sent letters to us; one man came to the house to shout. Two years later a gale left mounds of weed six feet high, like hayricks. Maybe sixty tons of weed! Again they wanted it removed, but how? Where would it go? We cleared paths through with forks. It rotted into the beach and became part of it. Within a month there was nothing left.

Bad feeling has remained, there are many won’t speak to neighbours and I’m one.

It has became clear that warmer winter ocean temperatures and a longer growing period, together with more powerful spring gales have made this dump of weed more frequent and much bigger. Increased understanding and acceptance of sea level rise has helped shift some opinion. This year when weed was dumped by another gale no one said a word. We held our breath. They’re realising that it won’t last long, they are readjusting to its presence.

The sand hoppers have not returned. There is no other beach near here from which we could repopulate, we have tried. But the dunes are growing. The shopkeeper has relented. His house is at sea level, he finally understood.