Wrack on Wrack on Wrack

So, you’ve planned a beach day at your favorite beach. You got all the food, drinks, activities, and towels packed. You get to the beach find your perfect spot and you set up camp. You’re lotioned up and ready to hit the water, but there is something stopping you from crossing over into the water. A large long pile of brown crap basically. Many people find it unsightly and want it removed from “their” beach. They want nothing but white sand and blue seas, they don’t want to look at this brown barrier.

What they don’t know is that this barrier crap which is called the wrack line is actually a key component of the beach ecosystem. Wrack lines are usually debris that has washed up with the tide. They are composed of mainly organic materials with a couple of human debris sprinkled throughout.  The wrack line provides food and shelter for many key organisms. Because the beach is such a dry and uninhabitable, proves that the wrack is a key aspect of the food web.  Scientists have recently found that 40% of invertebrates live within the wrack line. Without that wrack line providing food and shelter the entire ecosystem will be affected. The small fly, crabs, and insects feed many of the shorebirds that thrive on coastlines. The wrack line does decompose after time and it will get washed away with the tide. https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=124910&org=NSF

The next time that you’re at the beach getting a tan and swimming in the ocean and you see this unsightly wrack think about all the good that it is doing for the beach environment and in turn your beach experience. To find out more about the wrack line and all the good it does check out, http://explorebeaches.msi.ucsb.edu/sandy-beach-life/wrack-community

#wrackline #floridakeys