The Fauna Associated with Kelp Stranded on a Sandy Beach

Abstract

Seventy percent of the southern African coastline consists of sandy beaches (McLachlan et al. 1981), but these received little attention until Brown’s publications (1964, 1971a,b) on the general ecology of beaches around the Cape Peninsula. Since then McLachlan (1977a-c, 1980), Dye (1979), McLachlan et al. (1979, 1981), Dye et al. (1981) and Wooldridge et al. (1981) have investigated the physical parameters and fauna of eastern and southern coast beaches and Bally (1981), those of sandy beaches along the west coast north of the Cape Peninsula. All these are clean open beaches which receive only erratic deposits of macrophytes. The only form of primary production arises from offshore blooms of phytoplankton with the occasional stranding of carrion.