12 Foot Cliff.This cliff was being eroded today. It was actually very dangerous, which is one reason I decided to post the photo. I was walking along the beach next to this cliff and big chunks, some of which must have been around a ton containing some very hard packed material, would suddenly fall off. And I do mean without warning. A person could easily get seriously injured or even killed if they happened to be close enough to the cliff when it collapsed. I wanted you to be warned. If you are walking along this beach, stay out a ways from the cliff and be alert. By all means, do not get focused on the ground while digging a target at the base of the cliff.
The second thing I wanted to point out with this photo is the blue/green layer. That layer was about seven feet from the ground at the spot of the photo and about a foot and a half wide. The green shows where the bottom of a pond, lake or lagoon once was. The color is the result of algae or other flora on the bottom of the body of water.
Erosion like this is what treasure dreams are made of. It exposes ground that has not been available for detecting. If it was the site of a salvage camp or cache, the goodies would come tumbling out.
I'd sure like to know the age of the various layers. This is old undisturbed ground being exposed.
Other erosion in the same general area exposed dirt that had been brought in as fill. You can often tell fill-dirt because it does not match the surrounding earth and contains items layered in the wrong order. For example you might see a ten thousand year old fossil in what appears to be the same layer with plastic bags or Styrofoam cups. That tells you that the layer has been disturbed.
When you see erosion, look at the layers to see what you can learn about the age of that layer and the items in it.
The erosion that I showed yesterday at John Brooks didn't continue to erode much since then, in fact it began to fill a bit. Near high tide it had a lot of sea weed on it and the beach in front of the cuts was very mushy.
Bathtub Beach is closed again due to erosion. You can't expect that dredged sand to stay on the beach very long. Some of those beach renourishment sands is like pumping money into the ocean.
Silver hit a new 30 year high. It hasn't been that high since the Hunt brothers tried to control the silver market back in the eighties.
Maybe you heard about the message in a bottle that was put in the ocean on the Treasure Coast and was found about a year later in Ireland.
Here is the link.
http://www.gnn.com/article/florida-students-message-in-bottle/1313937?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-w%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk3%7C175779
Here is a reminder. If you use a waterproof detector and it gets salt water on itbe sure to wash it off with clean water as soon as possible.
I had an interesting day. The finds varied from a working dive watch to an old square nail and included a loose coin line that ran about a quarter of a mile and included some older coins. Quite a hodge podge. It was fun even if I didn't find the cache of gold escudos that I was looking for.
I could have missed a lot of the items if I didn't know about coin lines and how to identify and follow them.
There are different metal detecting scan patterns that can be used to identify coin lines. I don't know how much I've talked about that in the past.
Forecast and Conditions
I only looked at a couple of beaches this morning, but from what I saw, I'd say that the cutting will decrease over the next few days with the decreasing seas. Although I saw one beach that was still eroding, it looked to me as if most beaches would begin to fill soon.
If you look at the beaches a day or two before the seas get high, you'll see which beaches have the best chances of cutting when the seas increase. If the beach has already been cut back and a lot of the beach is already low, that beach will tend to erode more when the seas increase, while beaches with more sand on the front will be more protected.
Wabasso for example, with all of the past erosion, is vulnerable to new erosion. Also the fact that the dredged sand is in an unnatural and unprotected position makes it more vulnerable.
Anyhow, I think the next few days will show little if any further erosion, and many beaches will start to rebuild.
I'll maintain my level three rating through today at least, even if it is a minimal level three.
It is nice to see the beaches changing from a summer beach to a winter beach configuration.
As I said, yesterday, a few cobs were found the past couple of days.
Even though the seas will be decreasing for the next few days, the high tides are still unusually high and the wind is out of the northeast.
The next few days will provide a good opportunity to check the low tide areas.
Happy Hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
