One of Britain’s largest sunken forests reveals its secrets

Pett Level on England’s south coast was once full of oak, elm and ash trees. Today, it offers clues as to how climate breakdown can affect landscapes

On a broad expanse of beach overlooked by towering cliffs on the UK’s south coast, a ghost forest can be glimpsed at low tide. Easily missed among the boulders and rock pools, a landscape of gnarled black stumps and enormous fallen tree trunks is revealed and submerged twice a day in a bay between Hastings and Rye.

Twisted and smoothed by the tides, the soggy wood is strewn with barnacles and peppered with thousands of holes made by piddocks – burrowing shellfish which have made the logs their home.