TERMS
- BODIES of WATER
- TYPES of WATER
- LAND MASSES by WATER
- WEATHER, WAVES and TIDES
- SHORELINE STUFF
- TREASURES on the SHORE
- WEB SOURCES
BODIES of WATER
CHANNEL: An area that contains flowing water confined by banks.
DELTA: A large, silty, often triangular-shaped area where a river splits into different slow-flowing channels that have muddy banks.
ESTUARY: Often called Bays, Sounds, or Harbors, estuaries are partially enclosed bodies of water where freshwater mixes with saltwater. Estuaries usually have wide mouths which affords boats easy access to the sea (i.e., Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound, Puget Sound, and San Francisco Bay).
LAGOON: A shallow body of water located alongside a coast.
LAKE: A large body of water surrounded by land on all sides. Very large lakes are often called seas.
OCEAN: Extremely large body of salt water that surrounds a continent. Oceans cover about 70% of the Earth's surface, contain about 97% of the Earth's water supply, and play an extremely important role in our lives. For instance, they moderate the Earth's temperature by absorbing solar radiation and distributing the heat energy around the globe which heats the land and air during winter time and cools it during the summer. The oceans of Earth (Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Southern) are unique and are our most precious natural commodity for no other planet in the Solar System has liquid water and without it, there would be no life on Earth (and that includes you!).
RIVER: Large, flowing body of water that starts at a source such as natural spring or snow melts and usually empties into a sea, bay, lake, or ocean (i.e., Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, Severn, and Patuxent Rivers).
SALT MARSH: Low, grassy, coastal area surrounding an estuary, where rising tides often overflow the marsh.
SEA: Sometimes partly or completely surrounded by land, a sea is a large body of salty water that is often a smaller branch of an ocean (i.e., South China, Caribbean, Mediterranean, North, and Black Seas).
SOUND: A wide inlet of the sea or ocean that runs parallel to the coastline. Sounds often separate a coastline from a nearby island.
SOURCE: The beginning of a river.
STRAIT: A narrow body of water that connects two larger bodies of water.
SWAMP: A type of freshwater wetland that has spongy, muddy land and a lot of water.
TIDE POOL: A pool of sea water remaining after a tide has receded. Tide pools can be small and shallow or large and deep and are home to many creatures including sea anemones, crabs, mussels, starfish, sea urchins, and snails. Study but do not disturb the animals in these pools as it can kill them.
TRIBUTARY: A stream or river that flows into a larger river.
WATERSHED: The term given to the land that drains water into a particular stream, lake, or river.
TYPES of WATER:
BRACKISH WATER: Water that is saltier than fresh water but less salty than sea water such as found in bays and rivers. Brackish water can still frost glass and pottery shards but not as intensely as saltier ocean water.
FRESH WATER: Lacking salinity, the water from fresh or spring-fed ponds and lakes are often protected watersheds to supply drinking water.
SALINITY: The amount of salt dissolved in water. The higher the salinity, the more weathered the glass and pottery shards.
SALT WATER: Though the salinity varies from ocean to ocean, all oceans receive there saltiness from mineral salts (derived from rocks and soil) flowing down from river and bay beds. Over time, as the water leaves through evaporation, the salt remains, rendering these bodies of water saltier and saltier. Average ocean salinity is about 3.5% salt by weight. The saltiest water is in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf due to high evaporation rates and a low influx of fresh water. The least salty water is in the Polar Regions, where the salt is diluted by melting polar ice and lots of rain.
WATER COLOR: The color of water is affected by sunlight which, reflecting off the surface of the water, reflects the color of the sky. This is why the ocean looks so blue on cloudless, sunny days and gray on overcast ones. Other factors can also color the water, such as sediments and run-offs (which make some bodies of water look a silty brown such as the Chesapeake Bay); high levels of nutrients such as red algae (which is why the Red Sea is red); or high concentrations of certain minerals like hydrogen sulfide (a darkening agent which makes the Black Sea appears black).
LAND MASSES by WATER
ARCHIPELAGO: A group or chain of islands clustered together in a sea or ocean.
ATOLL: A ring or partial ring of up-raised coral in the ocean that grow on top of ancient, sunken volcanoes to form an island.
BANK: Land located on either side of a river or stream.
BARRIER ISLAND: Elongated islands built up by ever changing wave, current, and wind action that front the ocean and run parallel to a coastline. As the first line of defense, these islands protect adjacent coastlines from erosion.
CAPE: A pointed piece of land that juts out into a sea, ocean, lake, or river.
CHANNEL: A body of water that connects two larger bodies of water. A channel can also be a part of a river or harbor that is deep enough to let ships sail through.
CORAL REEF: Shallow, warm ocean habitats mostly in the tropics that develop near land and are rich in marine life. Formed when tiny animals (coral polyps) from large colonies die, leaving behind hard, stony, branching limestone structures. The complex coral reef habitat provides shelter for many sea animals. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest in the world.
- Fringing Reef: Coral reefs that grow on the continental shelf along a coastline.
- Barrier Reef: Running parallel to shorelines, these reefs are farther out than fringing reefs and are usually separated from the land by a deep lagoon. The barriers they form between the lagoon and sea impede maritime navigation.
COVE: A small, horseshoe-shaped body of water along a coast that is surrounded by land formed of soft rock.
HEADLAND: An elevated, seaward projection of a coastline that is less susceptible to flooding and more resistant to erosion than surrounding shore areas.
INLET: A narrow strip of water cutting between two islands.
ISLAND: A body of land surrounded by water.
ISTHMUS: A narrow strip of land with water on two sides that connects two larger land masses.
MARSH: An area of low-lying, waterlogged land, often beside a larger body of water that drains poorly and is prone to flooding.
PENINSULA: A body of land surrounded by water on three sides.
SANDBAR: Also called a Shoal, it is a submerged or emerged mound of sand or shell material that waves and currents build up in shallow water.
WEATHER, WAVES and TIDES
BREAKERS: Any waves that break into foam against the shore, sand bank, rock, jetty, or reef.
CURRENT: The horizontal movement or flow of water.
- Longshore Current: A current powered by breaking waves that run parallel to the shore in the surf zone.
DRIFT LINE: An accumulation of water-carried debris that forms at the upper levels of a beach providing evidence of wave inundation.
HURRICANE: An intense tropical storm with winds that move counterclockwise around a low-pressure system. Can cause flooding, beach erosion, and serious environmental destruction.
NOR‘EASTER: A large-scale storm occurring on the U.S. and Canadian eastern seaboards with strong, counterclockwise winds that approach shorelines from the northeast as the storm passes. Steep waves can cause coastal flooding, coastal erosion, and gale force winds.
STORM SURGE: These happen during severe storms when air pressure causes water levels to rise, and strong winds and large waves accentuate sea levels to the point where "surges" of water pass from the beach onto the land.
TIDE: The twice daily, periodic rise and fall of large bodies of water caused by the gravitational interaction between the Earth and the Moon.
- Ebb Tide: When water flows seaward in estuaries or tidal rivers during a tidal phase of lowering water level.
- Flood Tide: The incoming or rising tide that occurs during the transition from low to high tide, when tidal currents move toward land.
- High Tide: When the water is at its greatest elevation. High tide areas tend to collect the most debris.
- Low Tide: When the water is at its lowest elevation.
- Neap Tide: Weak tides that occur during quarter moons.
- Red Tide: Seawater discolored by the presence of large numbers of dinoflagellates which produce a poisonous toxin that can kill many forms of marine vertebrate as well as humans who consume contaminated shellfish.
- Rip Tide: A strong ocean current occurring when a storm’s strong winds push water towards the shore. (Important Tip: Swimming against a rip tide’s current will tire you out and can cost you your life. A more effective way to escape the narrow current is to first swim parallel to it, then as the current weakens, turn and swim toward shore.)
- Slack Tide: The period when the tide turns and there is little or no horizontal motion of tidal water.
- Spring Tide: Especially strong tides that rise highest and fall lowest during the new or full moon when the Sun, Moon, and Earth are directly in line.
- Proxigean Spring Tide: Rare, unusually high tides that happen less than once every 1.5 years. They occur when the moon is unusually close to the Earth and in the New Moon phase, when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth.
TIDAL WAVE: An unusual, often destructive large swell of water along the seashore that comes from a storm or a combination of wind and high tide.
TSUNAMI: Known to cause great destruction, a tsunami is a series of great sea waves, or wave trains, generated by underwater earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions or, more rarely, by the impact of giant meteors with the ocean. Tsunami waves be can as long as 60 miles and as far apart as one hour. Tsunamis have historically been called Tidal Waves because, as they approach land, they take on the characteristics of a violent onrushing tide rather than the cresting waves formed by wind action upon the ocean. Tsunamis, however, are not linked to tides.
WAVE: Caused by wind blowing across the surface of water. The stronger the winds, the bigger the waves, the more beach treasure that gets tossed in or churned up on shore.
SHORELINE STUFF
BACKSHORE: The area of shore lying between the average high-tide mark and the vegetation that is impacted by wave action during severe storms.
BEACH: An accumulation of unconsolidated sediment, usually sand, that covers the shore. Beaches are usually flat or low-lying areas.
BEACH FACE or FORESHORE: The section of the shoreline that lies between the average high tide mark and the average low tide mark and which is normally exposed to wave up-rush.
BEACH ROCKS: All the boulders, rocks, stones, and pebbles one finds on a beach have either washed in or tumbled down from hillsides. Each represents stages in the transformative journey from primal rock to sand and fine-textured silt.
CUSPS: Scallop-like ridges and depressions in the sand that are spaced at regular intervals along the beach.
DUNE: A ridge or hill composed of sand. Dunes are shaped by the wind and wave-transported material and are ever changing.
- Fore Dune: The area seaward of the frontal dune ridge that is distinguished by a lack of vegetation (i.e., usually just sparse beach grass).
INTERTIDAL ZONE: Also called the Littoral Zone, this is the space between the high and low tide zones where the land and sea meet. The cycle height of the tide cycle exposes more or less land each day. Intertidal zones are divided into five specific zones.
- High Tide Zone: An area on the beach located far away from the shoreline that usually floods during high tide. Brittle stars, crabs, limpets, mussels, sea stars, snails, whelks, sea weeds, and assorted stones, glass and pottery shards are commonly found here.
- Middle Tide Zone: An area on the beach below the high tide zone that is wet and dry several times a day depending on the tides. Crabs, horseshoe crabs, slipper shells, chitons, limpets, sea weeds, sand dollars, and star fish can all be stranded here waiting for the tides to carry them back out to sea.
- Low Tide Zone: An area by the shoreline that is usually wet and/or underwater unless the low tide is extremely low. This is where beachcombers have to be quick to jump on opportunities when they see things cast up from the surf.
- Spray Zone: An area located on the upper reaches of the intertidal zone that is usually dry though it can be sprayed from time to time with salt water during high tides, or flooded during strong storms or extremely high tides. Barnacles, limpets, periwinkles, and whelks can be found in this area. Sometimes in the sparse dune grass, you may find shells or shards of pottery and glass tossed up and stranded during heavy storms.
JETTY: A narrow, elongated structure built perpendicular to the shoreline whose purpose is to provide protection for boats and prevent longshore drift from filling the inlet.
SAND: Grains of sediment formed by the erosion of weathered and/or decayed rock. The term "sand" denotes a specific range of particle sizes within a sediment classification based on a diameter ranging between 1/16mm and 2mm. Although many minerals are found in sand, the greater part of most beach sand consists of quartz, the most abundant of all minerals and the most likely to survive grinding.
- Black Sand: Made from volcanic rock that, from years of weathering, breaks down into a fine black silt. Hawaii and other volcanic islands have black sand beaches.
- Pink Sand: Made from the breakdown of shells and coral like beaches found in Bermuda.
LITTORAL DRIFT: The sedimentary material moved into the intertidal zone by waves and currents.
SWASH: The rush of water up the beach face from a wave breaking.
UPDRIFT: The direction on a shoreline where sand accumulates opposite the predominant movement of sand and sediment.
UPRUSH: The landward flow of water onto the beach that occurs when waves break.
WASHOVER FANS: Fan-shaped accumulations of sand on the landward side of barrier islands that are deposited when storm waves remove sand from a beach face and deposit them on the marsh side.
WRACKLINE: Consists of materials that accumulate where the highest swash stops and leaves objects stranded. Wracklines can also become areas for new dune formation.
TREASURES on the SHORE
CHELICERATES: A class of arthropods that include horseshoe crabs, spiders, and mites.
CRUSTACEANS: The largest class of marine arthropods, crustaceans (i.e., lobsters and crabs) are animals with a hard, protective external shell, jointed legs, and a segmented body.
ECHINODERMAT: A Greek word meaning “spiny skin,” these are bottom -dwelling sea animals distinguished from other sea animal groups because their bodies are divided into five appendages, each pointing outward from the center of the body (i.e, starfish, sea urchins, and brittle stars).
MOLLUSK: The largest, most diverse phylum of animals next to arthropods, the soft-bodied mollusk is protected by a shell. Mollusks are basically divided into two types of shells–univalve or bivalve.
- Univalve: Single shell mollusks whose “homes” come in a variety of colors, designs, and sizes. Shell shapes are usually oval or cones. Conchs, tritons, snails, and turbans are common univalves.
- Bivalve: Mollusks with two symmetrical shell sides hinged together that can close up around them. Clams, scallops, and oysters are common bivalves.
FOSSILS: The preserved organic remains, impression, or imprints of animals or plant organisms of a past geologic age. Only ancient organisms that have solid, resistant skeletons are preserved as fossils. Most fossils are discovered in sedimentary rock layers where erosion is escalated. This includes exposed outcroppings along cliffs, river banks, and quarries. Fossils found on beaches include shark, skate, and dolphin teeth, bones and cartilage; shells; sand dollars and/or their imprints on rocks.
- Fossilized Shark Teeth: Are made of hard, bone-like material coated with hard enamel that fossilizes very well. Colored orange, grey, brown, or black, sharks have about 3-5 rows of teeth at a time that fall out and rotate into place as needed.
- Megalodon Shark Teeth: Megalodon means “Giant Tooth” and is the name of an ancient shark that lived roughly 25 million to 1.6 million years ago, during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs. Based on the size of the fossilized vertebrae and teeth found (some teeth are 6.5 inches bigger than an adult male hand) scientists estimate these sharks may have been 40 feet to 60 feet in length. Though thicker and bigger, the similarity of Megalodon teeth to those from today’s Great White Sharks indicate it might have been a more enormous, streamlined version of today’s Great White.
CORAL: Tiny marine animal that often live in colonies. Huge colonies of hard corals, which have tough skeletons made of limestone, form coral reefs.
FLOTSAM and JETSAM: These terms are used together to connote anything on a beach that would not naturally be found there including bottles, pottery, coins and jewelry, rope, needles, toys, plastic gee-gaws, junk, etc.
- Flotsam: Cargo or wreckage floating on the surface of the sea.
- Jetsam: Cargo or waste dumped overboard that washes up on the beach.
GLASS: When pieces of it are discovered on a beach, it is usually asymmetrical, thin as opposed to blocky or chunky, and can come with areas pitted or stained from salt wash or chemicals in the water.
- Beach Glass: Has one side frosted and worn due to wave action, and the other side shiny or glossy because that section of glass had been embedded in silt, clay, or sand. A shard may also have one or two sharp edges if it recently broke off from a larger glass object.
- Bonfire Glass: Melted shards of glass whose shapes are distorted from fire. Such glass can sometimes have bits of sand, soot, or charcoal embedded in it.
- Flat Glass: Glass shards from windows, windshields, etc.
- Sea Glass: Frosted, luminous pieces of glass so worn that there are no glossy areas. They can be heavily frosted with some pit marks.
- Sea Pebbles: Pieces of glass so worn and tumbled that they take on the shape of small, smooth rounded or oval-shaped rocks.
- Broken Glass: Shiny pieces of glass with sharp edges. Unless the colors are truly special to you, these need to be tossed back into the sea for further weathering.
QUARTZ: Stones with a hardness of seven on a scale of 10. Quartz comes in a variety of colors including rose, amber, white, clear, and gray. The more weathered the quartz (flatter and rounder) the older it is.
- Sunrise Quartz: Rare, smooth, flat oval quartz that come in a range of red and pink colors including salmon, rose, persimmon, and pale or carnation pink.
- Old Man’s Toenails: Mid-size orbs of flat quartz.
- Button Drops: Small, oval or round, clear or cloudy quartz orbs that resemble pearls or diamonds.
SEASHELLS: The hard portion or “home” of mollusks.
SEDIMENT: Small particles of soil or rock transported by water or the wind.
SEDIMENTARY ROCK: Rock formed from sediment, like sand, mud, and small pieces of rocks. Sedimentary rock layers with ripples in them were formed in water. Those with crackles from drying mud were formed in shallow water that evaporated. Some types of sedimentary rock include:
- Limestone: Mostly made of calcium carbonate, this sedimentary rock is formed from the remains of ancient seas, is fine-grained, and ranges from white to gray in color.
- Sandstone: Formed from shallow seas and desert deposits, this is a grainy sedimentary rock that comes in many colors, including gray, red, or tan.
- Shale: A sedimentary rock formed from clay and fine silt, this is a dark-colored black, deep red, or gray-green rock that gets very slippery when wet. It is usually found below sandstone.
SKIMMERS: Flat stones, rocks, or pieces of iron ore that one can skip across the surface of the water.
SILT: Very tiny particles of soil or rocks that range from 3 to 60 micrometers in diameter.
Web sources that aided in this glossary search:
www.beach-net.com
www.cfoc.edu
www.enature.com/fieldguides
www.enchantedlearning.com
www.onelook.com
www.reference-wordsmith.com
www.wordsmyth.net
www.wikipedia.com