In this month’s Manx Wildlife Trust column, Peter Duncan tells us about beachcombing after storms.

Storms are a common feature of this time of year, and while they may disrupt our travel plans, they can provide interesting outdoor holiday activities to work off a few Christmas calories and entertain the family.

Beachcombing is fun at any time, but after winter storms it can be especially rewarding (plus post-walk photo identification activity back home with a cuppa!)

Firstly, check the tides – you can beachcomb at most states, except high tide, and it’s better and safer on a falling tide. You can check tide times around the island on the Government website.

I recently spent an hour at Fleshwick beach, part of Niarbyl Bay Marine Nature Reserve in the south of the island which is a north-facing rocky shore, so it’s been a chaotic place in recent weeks, with lots of stuff washed up. Starting on the strandline, the highest point the tide reaches, you’ll tend to find the most buoyant items.

Unfortunately, this zone still seems to be dominated by our ubiquitous and careless plastic waste. The little green snips of plastic rope from fishing pots are always obvious (come on pot fishermen, you can do better!). But that said, the variety of plastics from land are both amazing and depressing.

We can all do better – remember everything we throw or lose outside ends up in the sea, and ultimately on the beach. So take a spare bag and help fill the Beach Buddies’ bins!

The next most obvious thing on the beach is seaweed (algae), including a lot of the large, deeper-water kelps ripped out by the storms, and now beginning to break up, providing glorious smells and plenty of food for sand hoppers, and thence everything up the food chain, especially coastal birds such as rock pipit, chough and turnstones.

There’s plenty of seaweed variety, and I saw seven different types including laminaria digitata (oarweed), laminaria hyperborea (tangle or cuvie) and dilsea carnosa (red-rags).

Surprisingly, I found a couple of shells (or tests) of edible sea urchins (echinoderms). These animals can usually hang on to rocks pretty well, but the waves must have dislodged them.

Identifying species from pieces of shell can also be fun. I found (bits of) king scallop, queenie, blue mussel, common limpet, blue-rayed limpet, whelk and Iceland clam.

Fish are not so common on the shore, as they are probably quickly eaten, but we did find several mermaid’s purses; most from small-spotted catshark and one from thornback ray.

You may also find various animal bones on the beach too, ranging from birds, fish, seals and even porpoises and dolphins, but it’s best to leave them in place as they can carry disease and some animals (including their bones) are protected under the Wildlife Act.

So, wherever you live around the island, your local beach will have its own particular flotsam and jetsam. Why not go and have a look?