swosh zohn | /swɒʃ zoʊn/
The swash zone is where the crashing surf spills landwards and then flows back to meet the next breaker – the restless stage upon which the eternal turf war between the land and sea plays out. Typically, a wrack line of organic debris such as seaweed, shells, and driftwood marks the extent of the high tide. These organic materials are increasingly mixed with tangles of fishing line, plastic bottles, and other marine litter. Incredibly, the sheer amount of plastics, mostly in the form of near invisible micro-beads and pellets, is creating a new category of coastal sedimentary rock known as plastiglomerate.
Despite the obvious challenges, a number of animals have adapted to live in the swash zone. Surf clams, mole crabs, and plough snails burrow into the sand to escape being dragged out to sea and evade predators. Gulls and sandpipers patrol, searching out the slow, the stranded, and any marine carrion gifted by the tides.
The swash zone is the front line in a relentless cycle of give and take – a complex interplay of hydrodynamics and beach morphology resulting in either new sediments being deposited by constructive waves with a weak swash or the land being eroded by destructive waves with a strong swash. The relatively slow, incremental influence of the swash is of course just one of the many forces shaping our coastlines. As an art student in the 1990s, I became very familiar with the beach at Sea Palling on the Norfolk coast. When visiting after a particularly violent storm, I was stunned to find it unrecognisable. A strong undercurrent, known as an ootrogue, had all but stripped away the great swathe of sand, revealing the remains of an ancient forest that was once part of the now submerged Doggerland.*
* Doggerland is the land that once connected the British Isles with mainland Europe. It was submerged by rising seas at the end of the last ice age around 8,500 years ago. Today, Sea Palling is protected by a series of off-shore reefs called detached breakwaters.
Introduction Aeolian Alpenglow
Benthos Crepuscular Crispate Crown shyness
Desire lines Dreich Endragoned Edgelands
Frondescence Fumarole Gluggaveður Gossamer
Karst Komorebi Lawrence Long acre
Machair Monkey’s wedding Moonglade
Psithurism Quartz Rakuyou Roaring forties
Snag Soft estate Specular, diffuse and pellucid
Spoondrift Steam fog Swash zone Sylvan
Tellurian and thalassic Terracettes Uliginous