ABSTRACT
Oceanic sandy beach surf zones extend from the shoreline to the outer-most breaker and are categorized based on how wave energy is released into dissipative, where wave energy is dissipated by breaking multiple times within the zone, and reflective, where the wave only breaks once and energy is reflected off the beach slope. In surf zones, water is not resident; it is exchanged between the surf and the inner shelf. Despite this exchange, interactions between surf hydrodynamics and organism behaviours allow some organisms on the inner shelf to avoid entering surf zones while others can maintain their position within the surf. These organisms are poorly studied, diverse and can be residents or immigrant species from adjacent coastal habitats. These biological communities include phytoplankton, zooplankton, demersal zooplankton and fish. These communities can vary among beaches with latitude, oceanographic regions and depending on how wave energy is released, and within a beach due to local hydrodynamic factors and seasonal sand movement. Surf zones are being impacted by climate change, with increasing water temperatures, wave height, sea-level rise, ocean acidification, and more frequent and stronger marine heat waves and ENSO events having a particular strong impact on the habitat as a whole.
