Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Yesterday I showed a photo of some of the guys from the Bomb Unit from Patrick Air Force Base that were in Vero beach because of a suspicous buried object detected by W. D. The Bomb Unit returned to the beach Tuesday morning and retrieved the object. The object turned out to be part of a gate that was first detected but not retrieved because of the depth and water last Saturday.
When found at low tide Saturday the object was about 19 inches deep. Only a section of the drab green pipe was glimpsed at the time. Tuesday, when it was retrieved, it was dug at a depth of only about 2 inches. As W. D. said, that gives some indication of the amount of erosion that occured in that area in the past few days.
W. D. uses a Detector Pro Headhunter Pulse Induction with a 11 inch coil.
W. D. uses a Detector Pro Headhunter Pulse Induction with a 11 inch coil.
He wrote, The police said they are very careful about this because back in the eighties a policeman in Port St. Lucie checked on a device on the beach that was a cannister. He cut it with an axe and it was a phosphorous flare. He suffered severe burns and the doctors had to immerse him in a tub of saline water in a darkened room to retrieve the burning metal with tweezers. Luckily he had his vest on.
My advice to everyone is if you find anything suspicious on the beach don't be too embarrased to call the police.
Good advice W. D., and thanks for the photo and story.
There are a couple of good lessons there. One is how you can monitor sand levels as they increase and decrease over detected objects. Another is that there will be times when you can't retrieve certain objects, but if you try again when conditions such as the tide, sand level or surf changes, you might be able to get it later. Of course, it could disappear too. And third, be careful. There are buried objects that can be dangerous. In this case W. D. played it safe, and I think he enjoyed the experience.
I wonder how long that gate has been out there. Evidently not too long by the looks of it. So why is it there and how did it get there? I wonder how many times it has been detected.
I feel like I understand a lot about how object move on a beach and how they end up where they are found, but there is one important part that I wish I understood better. I've conducted some experiments that have given me some insight, but I wish I could put a GPS locator on a cob so I could track it's movements.
I was surprised by the results of the most recently concluded blog poll. I really expected either Garrett or Whites to come out on top. I didn't expect Minelab to be rated as having the best target ID. When I think of Minelab, I don't really think of target ID. Of course they do have ID meters for some of their models such as the Sovereign. The results could have been swayed by the popularity of Mainelab detectors on the Treasure Coast.
There are a couple of good lessons there. One is how you can monitor sand levels as they increase and decrease over detected objects. Another is that there will be times when you can't retrieve certain objects, but if you try again when conditions such as the tide, sand level or surf changes, you might be able to get it later. Of course, it could disappear too. And third, be careful. There are buried objects that can be dangerous. In this case W. D. played it safe, and I think he enjoyed the experience.
I wonder how long that gate has been out there. Evidently not too long by the looks of it. So why is it there and how did it get there? I wonder how many times it has been detected.
I feel like I understand a lot about how object move on a beach and how they end up where they are found, but there is one important part that I wish I understood better. I've conducted some experiments that have given me some insight, but I wish I could put a GPS locator on a cob so I could track it's movements.
I was surprised by the results of the most recently concluded blog poll. I really expected either Garrett or Whites to come out on top. I didn't expect Minelab to be rated as having the best target ID. When I think of Minelab, I don't really think of target ID. Of course they do have ID meters for some of their models such as the Sovereign. The results could have been swayed by the popularity of Mainelab detectors on the Treasure Coast.
Minelab received 36% of the responses, Whites 25%, Garrett 19%, Fisher 9%, Tesoro 6% and other 2%. Target ID has never been something that has been real important to me, but it does have its applications, even though I think most people use it way too much.
Gold is still in the $1600s. Not bad. That makes almost any gold find worth something.
Wedding bands are among the most common gold finds on the beach. If you are only finding larger men's bands, you are probably using too much discrimination. As I've said before, there was a time when I thought women didn't lose as many bands as men. That was shortly after I began detecting and missed a lot of the smaller women's rings.Rings with nice gem stones often have small bands. You don't want to miss those.
If you've only been finding larger bands, it's time to experiment with your detector. Take the smallest thinnest band you can find out and practice detecting it.
To the right is a recent gold band find. 18 kt. and nearly average size for a man's ring. Not too large and not too small..
Look for any inscriptions on the inside of the band. Some people even get their name inscribed.
Sometimes I'm surprised by what people do or don't respond to. I thought I would get some email about the ghost ship post, but not a word.
I like to publish stories of returned finds. People need to know how many finds are returned. And the officials need to consider that when they talk about banning metal detectors. If you ban metal detectors, a lot of cherished items will remain lost for ever.
A lot of my returns happened very shortly after the loss. In those cases, someone usually saw me on the beach and asked me to come find the ring, gold chain, eye glasses, car keys or whatever it was that they just lost. Those are the easy ones. I've found and returned all of those kinds of things. The eye glasses took me longer than the others that I can think of right now. A guy staying at a hotel lost his glasses in two or three feet of water. Like I said, it took me a while that time, but I found them.
Imagine the inconvenience of losing your eye glasses when away on vacation, especially if you need them to drive or whatever.
You know, the more I think of it the more cases I remember. I just remembered the time a young girl came to me and said she lost her sister's class ring. I haven't thought of that one in years. She wasn't supposed to have her sister's ring, but took it and wore it and dropped it in the ocean. I found that one quickly in about four feet of water. She was certainly relieved.
There are a lot of people out there that think detectorists profit from the losses of other people. They don't know how many items that would have remained lost if not for a detectorist. That is one reason I'd like to publish more stories on returns. We do it all the time, but usually nobody hears about it.
Treasure Coast Beach Detecting Conditions and Forecast.
I'm sticking with a minimal two rating on my Treasure Coast beach conditions rating scale for another day. that will probably be the end of the upgrade.
The wind is from the southeast and the seas are down to around four or five feet. Seas will be calm this weekend again. Sunday the wind will be from the west. With the calm seas, west wind and Super Moon, that should be a very good day for hunting the low tide zone, and be a good day for getting in the water if you can find a spot that isn't buried deep in sand.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
