To remove a pebble from a beach?

[Pigeonpoodle]

I saw this on another thread… Apparently “everyone knows that’s wrong!” I’ve very occasionally taken the odd interesting pebble as a momento. AIBU to have done that… What on earth could be the problem with it? One pebble amongst billions!

from a beach…

I saw the thread and didn’t get it either

You don’t need to get it you just need to acknowledge the 4 posters who thought they proved the point by linking to a news story saying removing pebbles risks a £1k fine 😂 because if you don’t… they’ll keep posting it…..

It's to do with protecting beaches from coastal erosion and I think is technically illegal.

I think it unlikely that anything would be done unless you were there every weekend removing tonnes of beach material.

Just imagine if everyone did it. Its not that difficult to understand. You should leave things as you find them them, whether the beach or countryside. Don't leave litter behind and don't remove part of the landscape.

Why would you do
it now that you know you’re not supposed to? It’s not hard to look up the reasons why you’re not supposed to do it, and why it can attract a fine. If you’re invested enough to start a thread about it, why wouldn’t you just do a quick google?

I’ve taken shells from
beaches before, but since learning that people taking shells mean that crabs end up living in plastic, I stopped doing it because to carry on doing it would make me a selfish twat.

Before people jump at me, no, I won’t do it anymore, now that I’ve looked it up and realise it’s not allowed. However, I do wonder if the regulations are there to prevent people to take buckets of pebbles for their front garden or whatever, rather than picking up one single pebble. It’s quite obvious that it’s not a good idea to take big quantities, not so much how one pebble makes a difference, even if everyone takes one.

It’s the sort of thing a smug clipboard holding, rule follower loves to get wound up about!

What about seashells? Is it ok to take those?

out of interest how do people get pebble gardens?
do builders take lorry loads?
i have taken pebbles in the past, when dc were young, one that looked like a dog's nose.
couple of shells
but that is about it

No

what about all those painted pebbles ?
is that illegal?

If you want to avoid the ire of the righteous and still take your one pebble, I suggest you swap it for a similar sized stone dug from your garden. The sea will round it off and it will become a pebble.

Gosh I never knew this! When the dc were small and we went to the beach, they used to fill their buckets with interesting pebbles and shells which we then brought back home - I had no idea it's not allowed!

You’ve just given me an idea - my garden soil is quite stony (small stones, but a nuisance around planting) so I put them to one side & then don’t know what to do with them. I live near a stony beach, maybe I could take a bucketful to the shore now & again & deposit them!

Commercial pebbles are generally quarried under licence, with the environmental factors considered, or man made.

Re painted pebbles- I guess you’d have to know whether the were sourced from the beach 😂 but they in themselves are not “illegal”- just the act of taking them

There were big campaigns around ten years ago, to not do it. So I'm wondering if many MNers missed them. These sorts of issues tend to be covered on local news, around 6pm, so again, they will be missed.
In a way it's like picking flowers, or taking fruit off wild bushes. We don't have enough for wildlife and our population levels are much higher than they were. With the take over of gulls and magpies, garden birds now have all sorts of pressures against them. Now, according to another thread, we have Estate agents telling sellers to get rid of the garden.

There are 9 billion people in the world

So technically we need to work out that if every single person in the world did it, would there be a deficit of 9 billion pebbles and if so what sort of impact would that make

Where would all the pebbles go in any case

YANBU to do it in the past if you didn't realise it's wrong. But now you know - don't do it. Simple.

I’ve got a house full of interesting rocks, shells and fossils I’ve picked up from beaches all over the world. Human beings have been collecting pretty things to adorn their homes since Palaeolithic times, it’s hardwired in to some of us.

I’ll take my chances with a fine or annoying a few righteous folk who probably have nothing in their houses that didn’t come from Dunelm.

You really can't see that it may be a problem if everyone who visited a beach took a pebble home with them?

Surely it would make you a Shellfish twat.

You might have had my sympathy until you last sentence, what a nasty sneering judgement

Caring about pebbles has got nothing to do with where anyone shops

Nope. Let’s assume there are one billion pebbles on a beach, and - yearly average, more in summer, less in winter - 50 people per day. If everyone takes one, we’d lose 18k pebbles per year. One billion minus 18k doesn’t sound too dramatic to me, I think global warming will wipe us all out before we get to a point where 18k per year reasonably affect the one billion.

You can buy them we pebbled our garden i think they come in one tonne loads, we only have a small garden but I think we needed several tonnes, it was during lockdown,whilst the world was a bit crazy.