ABSTRACT
The readily available food source provided by shellfish and other inshore fisheries has made coastal sites attractive for human settlements from the time of Mesolithic strandlooping cultures (Ch. 3) to the present day. Most coastal towns originated as fishing ports, but with the overexploitation of all kinds of sea fisheries, or their isolation from the sea by coastal accretion, many have long gone into decline as fishing harbours and now rely on the tourist industry for their prosperity. The lure of the seaside holiday now seems long-established, yet it was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the sea and sea bathing came to be regarded as a pleasure rather than a cure, and only with the development of the railways that the little fishing villages developed as resorts. 1 A vast international industry is now based on sun and sandy beaches, and as a result long stretches of coastline throughout the world are covered in hotels, campsites, or yachting marinas. Silty or muddy shores are not so congenial to most kinds of recreation but have not escaped other kinds of development. Muddy foreshores and estuaries are amongst the most productive ecosystems known, largely because of the flow into them of organic materials manufactured in terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Thus subsidised, they form fertile farmland when inned from the sea and drained, and such reclamation has added greatly to the extent of many countries, particularly the Netherlands.
