Thursday, December 9, 2010

12/9 Report - A Found Shipwreck Spike, Rust Eating Bacteria, & TV Show Being Made



Photo of a Nice Spike Found Near the Boca Inlet.

I like the detail shown of the head of this spike. Thanks to Andrew G. for submitting the photo of his find.


A new species of rust eating bacteria has been discovered that speeds the deterioration of shipwrecks. Shipwrecks are not underwater museums frozen in time but may deteriorate faster and in ways other than previously thought.

Here is a link about how the Titanic is being affected by rust-eating bacteria.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/bacteria-eating-away-titanic-ship-wreck-101206.html

Metallurgical studies are being conducted on ancient Greek and Roman coins to learn more about ancient trade routes. This is the type of thing that I've mentioned as possibly being applied to cobs and Spanish colonial coins to help further identify those coins.

Here is the link.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-ancient-coins-modern-society.html

I recently was contacted by Engel Entertainment who makes documentary TV shows for networks like the Discovery and History channel. They'll be filming in Florida in January for a new program about archaeology and anthropology.


I received more reports of possible space shuttle metal being found on the Treasure Coast recently as well as other finds.

Forecast and Conditions.

Today I stopped for about an hour of detecting where I found a nice four foot high cut in an out of the way place. Even though it was pretty far from any beach accesses, the cut produced a pocket full of modern coins in less than an hour. A couple of other things were found in between the coins.

I'm surprised that nobody found that cut the other day and cleaned it out. Sometimes they replenish day after day, so maybe someone did get to it before me. Nice deep cuts are always worth at least checking.

I didn't spend much time out today, but did check a couple of other spots where after looking them over, didn't detect.

One thing I'll reiterated today is that there are now some cuts worth checking even though many of the beaches are accumulating a lot of shell sand. The cuts that I saw weren't in the most productive spots, but anytime you can pick up a pocket full of coins it's worth detecting a little. As I said yesterday, other things will occasionally pop up in between the coins, and sometimes they are interesting.

The newly accumulating shell sand might also be worth checking. I noticed what appears to be a fairly large iron artifact found where the larger stones were accumulating near the back of the new sand piles.

I'm fining interesting spots even though the probability of fining cobs is still relatively poor. I would rate conditions as a 1 on my beach conditions rating scale. It wouldn't take too much improvement for me to upgrade to a 2 rating.

Things will occasionally be found. And I wouldn't be totally surprised if a cob or two pops up somewhere.

I have some things to clean, test and identify before I say much more about them.

The seas won't change much through this week if the surf web site are correct.

I'd be checking out any cuts you can find and also any new shell piles or rock lines.

Keep your eyes open.

I've been busy and late on posting. Maybe I'll miss a post or two in the next couple of weeks.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net