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Legendary Wreck Beach held plenty of allure to a 19-year-old Mary Jean Dunsdon, new to Vancouver from Kamloops.

Over the next two decades, Dunsdon became Watermelon, a fixture on Canada’s most famous clothing-optional beach hawking watermelons and other edibles.

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But the beach she loves so much for its natural beauty and sense of community is changing, she said, and naturists like her are dwindling.

“We’re an endangered species,” said Watermelon from her licorice store on Commercial Drive. From a 50-50 split in the early 1990s, the number of “textiles,” (Wreck Beach lingo for clothed people) has increased to about 70 per cent in recent years. “We’ve become the minority,” she said.

In the 1970s, beachgoers would get to the bottom of 400-odd wooden stairs on Trail 6 and immediately shed their clothes, said Watermelon. Not many do anymore.

Judy Williams of the Wreck Beach Preservation Society pegs the ratio at about 60-40 in favour for clothed beachgoers. But since a massive beach party organized on Facebook drew about 14,000 partygoers to the beach on July 1, the presence of “textiles” is even more prominent.

Why someone would want to come to a nude beach and not strip baffles Williams. She stressed the beach is a public space and open to everyone but “there’s a code of etiquette down here.”