Tag: Beach of the Month

There are many strikingly regular patterns in nature that have long intrigued scientists and non-scientists alike. Beach cusps are one of these.

Presque Isle in Lake Erie (one of the U.S. Great Lakes), Pennsylvania, is a recurved sand spit with seven miles of shoreline facing the open lake. As many as 4 million visitors enjoy this beautiful state park each year, in all seasons, for a variety of activities that include hiking, bird watching, skiing, and fun at the beaches.

California has over 300 miles of beaches, those that most residents and visitors think about are the ones consisting of find-grained white sand. But there are also some interesting anomalies. One of California’s strangest beaches sits 30 miles south of the picturesque north coast town of Mendocino…

Gabon is on the equatorial coast of West Africa between the Congo and Niger deltas, surrounded by Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon to the north and Congo to the south and east. Gabon has a long, sandy coast backed in most cases by a dense tropical rainforest. Elephants, buffalos, various antelopes, monkeys, pythons and even leopards leave their trails on the beach.

One of the general rules of beaches is that “no beach stays the same” neither over long reaches or very short stretches nor for very long time intervals. This rule is as true for fresh-water beaches as those of the salty seas. Rosy Mound Natural Area about 2 km south of Grand Haven, Michigan, on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan is a good example.

Through a series of excursions, I bring to you some ground-truthing in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, SC as an amateur naturalist.

Cape Romain is South Carolina’s only cape and its most erosional coast. Change is happening rapidly here.

Dog Island is a 6.8 mile-long, east-west trending barrier island along the so-called “forgotten coast” of the Panhandle of Florida, in the Gulf of Mexico.