Flotsam and jetsam

Flotsam designated items that are washed by ocean currents and tides of the sea beaches.

There are mostly floating objects coming from a crashed ship, have been washed overboard a ship or have been removed to another part of the coast and are then passed as flotsam on the beach.

A distinction is made between

• Flotsam in the narrower sense, the salvaged at a distress objects;
• Seeauswurf, items that are in addition to the case of a distress thrown from the sea on the beach;
• Beach drift ( strandtriftigem Good), items that have driven from the sea to the beach and sheltered from the beach;
• Wreckage, sunken wreckage or other objects that are brought up from the seabed.

Ownership of the discovery of flotsam regulated in Germany used to be the beach right (also called Strandungsordnung ). Administrator of the beach were the good Strandvögte.

By Article 35 of the Law of 28 June 1990 on the general rules of property law differs beach laws were repealed.