1. When you’re exploring unfamiliar beaches or shores, be careful to know where you’re stepping.

2. Be especially careful around shoals and beaches and spits jutting into deep water with strong currents around

3. I’ve seen many firm looking sandy beaches along rivers and creeks and other shores even inland. When I stepped on them I found the firm surface to be thin with sucking mud or silt underneath, sometimes with trickles of water running toward the water’s edge. You can sink quickly into the muck. The effect is a little like quick sand, although usually one doesn’t sink too deeply. But it pays to be cautious.

4. In some places, such as, for example, Frying Pan Shoals, it’s tempting to walk far out onto the shoal from the beach when it’s bare from very low tides. But when a tide starts to turn, especially if it’s been unusually low, it can come in amazingly fast. And the sand, as the water fills in beneath it, sucks your feet slowing you down as you rush back to the safety of the firm beach.

Copyright 2004-2009 Tom Neale