Okay here’s the latest, I’m still experimenting with seaweed, so far it looks really fake which completely ruins the scene. I’m also considering adding a flock of birds probably in the top left or maybe in the middle of the sky, I’ll experiment and figure out which is best.
Tried the fluid sim, but it wasn’t giving me the scale I wanted. Ended up just modeling it with a lathe (spin) and a couple displacement modifiers.
Early prelim:
Re: Seaweed. Yeah, I was playing with dynotopo the last couple days and tried to create a quick seaweed. I gave up.
Re: Gulls. Looks great!
Ah I don’t think I could do that with animated waves without making it look really out of place and CG.
Not bad, I think it definitely adds an important element to the scene.
How did you place them? They look a little rigid on top of the stones, it might help to do a shrink wrap modifier or soft body sim to lay them down in the crevices a little more.
EDIT:
Something like this?
I used a particle system. Would shrink wrapping work with a particle system?
I would try but I’m just rendering out another animated version without the seaweed because to me it didn’t look right, but if I can get it to work I’ll definitely keep it.
Okay here’s the latest version (minus the seaweed) animated:
it’s getting better all the time. Even the foam is getting there but i think the trailing edge of the retreating foam should be slower and frothier (if that’s a word, i mean with lots of tiny bubbles, like beer 
That might be a bit tricky based on how I’ve done it but I’ll investigate. Thank you for the feedback 
Okay guys, I think I’ve finished this project now… Thank you all very much for the help and support. I couldn’t get the seaweed to work in the end but I’m happy with the final result.
I’ll also upload this to the finished project section in a short while.
Shrinkwrapping doesn’t work with regular particle systems, but you can use a “particle instance” modifier on the seaweed model and the shrinkwrap below that.
I really like the seagulls, but I think they’re drawing focus from the beach. You just HAVE to follow them with your eyes.
But this is just something minor that I noticed. Great work!