ABSTRACTThe bulk of the material comprising the pocket beach at the mouth of the Manndraperelv, Tanafjord, northern Norway, is supplied by the river. The stream bed consists of poorly sorted coarse sediments which show a crude upstream imbrication. Dampening of wave activity near the mouth of the stream by the outflow of water has caused relatively fine‐grained material to accumulate on spits. Size‐shape sorting by waves concentrates the finest pebbles on landward moving swash bars.Away from the stream mouth beach deposits become finer grained landward, and are zoned in a manner similar to that described by BLUCK (1967). If similar deposits were preserved in the geological record they might be confused with coarse‐grained fluviatile sequences. Study of the textures of the Manndraperelv deposits establishes criteria for distinguishing between these two possibil