The Fauna of Sandy Beaches in the Gold Coast

Abstract

washed by continuous but not very heavy surf. In contrast to those of the adjacent territories (see PUGH 1954) most of its shores show a greater or lesser extent of rock. There are two long stretches of sandy shore, at the western and eastern ends of the coastline: extending 58 miles from the Ancobra river to the boundary of the Ivory Coast in the west, and 80 miles from the neighbourhood of Ningo to the boundary of French Togoland in the east. The extent of purely rocky shore, however, is small and most of the 200 miles of coast between the Ancobra River and Ningo is a mixed one on which, most commonly, the beach shows exposures of both sand and rock. There are however, a number of sandy bays like those at Burtre and Busua in the west and many shorter stretches of sandy beach, ranging from less than a quarter of a mile up to 5 or 6 miles in length. The fauna of these sandy beaches has been examined at a number of points along the coast (Fig. 1.). The examinations were made on spring tides and the procedure followed on each beach was as follows. A transect line was selected which was representative of the beach as a whole and levels taken at 5 m intervals from low water mark of spring tides to the highest point of the beach. At each of the stations so established the sand in a half metre square was dug out to 10 cm depth and washed through a 1 mm seive. The animals retained on the seive were identified, sorted and counted. Further squares were dug between those of the first series if there were indications that interesting points had been missed. It soon became apparent that most of the beaches conformed rather closely to a single pattern which had first been examined at Denu. The survey of this