Beachcombing

The practice of searching a beach and its intertidal zone for objects of value, interest or utility, with a practitioner called a beachcomber. The English terms first appeared in Richard Henry Dana Jr.'s Two Years Before the Mast in 1840 and Herman Melville's Omoo in 1847, originally describing sailors, an estimated three quarters of those involved, who had left their ships to live on South Pacific islands and scavenged the shore for flotsam and jetsam to use or trade; by 1850 more than two thousand such beachcombers were living across Polynesia and Micronesia. Today's recreational beachcombers instead search mainly for natural finds such as seashells, fossils, sea glass and driftwood, with experienced practitioners applying knowledge of storms, tides, currents and the seasons to locate rarer material while practicing conservation of the shoreline they search.