Before driving further north to Christchurch today, I visited Seadown Beach again. I arrived at 9 am, about 90 minutes after low tide, and spent two hours there. There were a few spots of rain around but otherwise it was mainly just cloudy. The atmosphere was rather moody, feeling close. I first hunted for stones at the south end of the beach, around the rocks, sometimes walking a grid pattern to cover the couple of large patches of stones there. I then walked northwards along the beach for a while.
I was especially looking for the yellow-brown stones with tiny bryozoan fossils. I came across one nice-sized one as well as a smaller one – they’re not easy to spot.
When I came across the next stone, I decided to put it in my bag so I could photograph it later to take a closer look. I suspected the white material would be interesting. It turns out to be chalcedony, a cryptocrystalline form of silica:
The most interesting of the fossil sea floor stones I found has a tiny white spot in it that the photographs clarified as a cross-section of a very small shell:
Among the other stones I collected were the following four: one with what appears to be dendritic-like markings; what is maybe a kind of white-grey quartzite; a stone with an interesting green colour in it, could be a jasper; and a red jasper that is partly orbicular.
The final six of today’s finds:
That afternoon, I drove to Christchurch and stayed overnight with Tracey and Ashley. Tracey had accompanied me at the start of my Southern Sojourn for a few days (see, for example, this Post and this Post). The next day, I drove to Ward and visited Ward Beach, the subject of the next Post in this Series. An Index to the “Southern Sojourn 2023” Series is here.
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