This is a list of beaches of the world, sorted by country. A beach is a landform along the shoreline of an ocean, sea, lake, or river. It usually consists of loose particles, which are often composed of rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, or cobblestones. Beaches typically occur in areas along the coast where wave or current action deposits and reworks sediments. The particles comprising a beach are occasionally biological in origin, such as mollusc shells or coralline algae.