Increased use of beaches for recreational purposes has led to the intensification of beach cleaning practices, especially in urban areas.
This process involves the use of heavy machinery to drag a large rake or sieve across the surface of the sand to remove debris from the surface layer.
This process is designed to remove human waste and debris, however is non-selective and results in the removal of much of the surface layer including washed up organic material known as wrack.
Sandy beaches often lack large attached plants and, consequently, in situ primary production is usually low with the
exception of the beaches that support high accumulations of surf diatoms.
As a result most sandy beaches are reliant on wrack to fuel local food webs.
The wrack supports a diverse array of organisms, including invertebrate macrofauna that may consume the wrack, meiofauna associated with sediments and predators such as shore birds.
The removal of wrack from these ecosystems can greatly reduce the abundance of sandy beach fauna.
Despite these known impacts, the practice is used frequently by coastal managers around the world as an easy and efficient tool to maintain the aesthetic quality of sandy beaches for human use.