When I went for a walk on the beach at Hastings yesterday, I came across a few bunches of seaweed. So, I took a closer look and found what I had been hoping for: egg cases (also known as mermaid's purse). I do not know to which shark species the egg cases belonged to, but could be catsharks maybe.
Although some of them were already empty (the pale ones), they were entwined with those where the sharks have not hatched yet. One can actually see the yolk and embryo very clearly inside one of the egg cases (second picture). Anyway, I could not take the egg cases home with me, so instead I returned them to the sea in order to protect them from drying out.
Less pleasant, however, was the finding of a number of fishing lines, complete with fishhooks and shiny bait (little plastic fish) and some sort of a weight (the oval grey piece at the bottom) which I all found on a short beach section at the most eastern end of the beach.
Since I almost always carry a pair of simple garden gloves with me for reasons like that, I picked the fishing lines and hooks up and disposed of them. It was not that long ago that I was able to witness how potentially deadly these things can be when a seagull mistook the bait for food and got entangled in the fishing line with the hook through its beak. The seagull was lucky though, thanks to some beach goers who freed it, but it was still a horrible sight.
All in the all, the beach at Hastings is place where one can always find all kinds of litter lying around. Not a place I would recommend to people with children.
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