Coastal Notes · Where's My Sandy Beach
Coastal Notes

The full journal, one shoreline at a time

Fifteen entries and counting: science, history, and the occasional bit of philosophy, all tied back to real coastlines. Filter by the kind of story you're in the mood for, or just scroll.

Illustrated Ama diver underwater holding a sea urchin
Historical Currents

The Haunting Whistle of the Sea | Ama Divers

Japan's free-diving sea women and the whistle that still echoes over the water.

Cornish fishermen hauling a net full of pilchards at dusk
Historical Currents

Silver Harvesters

Cornish pilchard fishermen and the vanished economy that once shimmered in silver.

Aerial view of waves swirling toward a beach with a coral reef below
Science of the Sea

The Butterfly Ocean

What chaos theory and a single wave have in common.

Whale tail and blowhole spray at sea
Science of the Sea

Quantum Possibilities in the Ocean Deep

Could whales and fish be coordinating through something stranger than sound?

A single water droplet rising from misty waves
Science of the Sea

Quantum Jumps

The instantaneous leaps inside every atom, and their echoes in the sea.

Sunlit coral reef teeming with color underwater
Science of the Sea

The Architecture of Coral Reefs

How billions of pinhead-sized builders raise cities visible from space.

An otter and a dolphin fin close together in shallow water
Science of the Sea

The Lift of Water (Buoyancy)

The invisible force that lets a jellyfish float and a whale surface.

Sailboat moving through a tidal channel at sunset with the moon overhead
Science of the Sea

The Pull of the Tides

Gravity made visible, twice a day, on every shore on Earth.

A corked glass bottle with a note, floating on open water
Historical Currents

The History of Messages in Bottles

A tradition of trust, cast into the waves and answered decades later.

Person walking on the beach at golden hour with soft mist
Science of the Sea

Morning Mist

The quiet physics behind the fog that rolls in at dawn.

Compass and map on driftwood table with a ship on the swirling sea
Science of the Sea

The Ocean's Relation to Pi

How a single constant threads through waves, tides, and navigation.

A sandcastle beside the waves
Tides of Thought

Thich Nhat Hanh on Impermanence

What a sandcastle can teach about holding on loosely.

Sunlit underwater view with plankton suspended in green water
Science of the Sea

Phytoplankton

The invisible painters that make half our planet's oxygen.

Girl holding a large seashell to her ear on the beach
Historical Currents

Why Seashells Sing of the Sea

The real reason a shell sounds like the ocean when you hold it to your ear.

Close-up sand grains and shells at sunset
Science of the Sea

The Science of Sand

Every coastline in America is written in a different kind of grain.

More where that came from

One email a quarter, a roundup of what's new. Nothing else.

wheresmysandybeach.com · a DigiWorld property Privacy & Terms