I love black and white photography. I actually have a whole website devoted to my attempts to re-create the days of black and white film when you would only take a few pictures of an event so they had to count (Here’s the website if you are interested). Also, black and white just changes the way you look at things… you pay more attention to details.
Still, I don’t do much black and white on the beach. When you are dealing with sunsets, the color is just too good to brush away in most cases. Still, sometimes it just works.