9/26/17 Report - What the High Water Did To Some Beaches. Useful Web Site For Predicting Beach Conditions. Various Types of Finds Along the Treasure Coast.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Frederick Douglas Beach This Morning.

Yesterday I showed the water getting high on Frederick Douglas beach.  Today I went out to see what happened.  The answer unfortunately, is very little.

I'm about to call Irma, Jose and Maria all a bust when it comes to improving metal detecting conditions.  Who would guess that three hurricanes would not produce much better beaches?  Not one of them did a lot for us.

There are reasons.  And I'm always learning.  I learned something just the other day.  Actually I already knew it to some extent, but didn't give pay take it into account enough.  There is little use to pay attention to wind direction unless it is blowing fairly hard.  Otherwise it is not going to affect the direction of the swells.

The past few days I looked at the wind direction on MagicSeaWeed, but I didn't pay enough attention to the wind speed.  I should have paid more attention to what web sites like Ventusky.com was telling me when I plotted the waves.

Below is an example.

Wave Direction.for Yesterday.

Source: Ventusky.com

What I saw at the beach yesterday and today matched what Ventusky.com said a couple of days ago (See my 9/23/17 post.). The waves, as predicted were hitting the beach straight on despite the north winds. The wind wasn't very strong, so didn't seem to have much effect.

We always talk about northeasters, but direction isn't the only factor.  The wind has to be fairly strong, otherwise they won't have a significant effect on the swells.

I think I could do this a hundred years and I would still continue to learn.

Below is another picture of a beach that I looked at this morning.

Treasure Coast Beach Tuesday Morning.

Notice the waves coming directly at the beach and all the seaweed.  The beach was building.  You could see new layers of sand on the beach.  That isn't what we were hoping for.  I'll pay more attention to the swells in the future and less to wind direction.  

I've said before that it doesn't take a hurricane and recently went over what happened during the Thanksgiving Storm of 1984.  Jon Morgan, who does the great Lets Talk Metal Detecting and Treasure Hunting podcasts, said that post was very helpful to him.  You might want to take a look at that post again.  Hurricanes don't always create good detecting conditions.  Neither does high water.

I made a few interesting finds today - at least I thought they were interesting.

I found one very big piece of wood.  It was about seven feet long.  My photo showing the entire length somehow got lost, but here are a couple photos of a section of the wood.

Large Piece of Wood Found On Beach This Morning.

 Notice the worm holes and the apparently worked surface.

Another Shot of the Same Piece of Wood.

Ballast Stone?

A couple of days ago I mentioned finding some pieces of fossilized bone.  Here is the smallest - a small vertebra.

Small Fossilized Vertebrae Shown On U. S. Nickel.

I picked up more fossils today.  They are shown below.

Fossils Found On Beach Today.

The most interesting one to me was the piece of antler.  I've found those before and always like them.

Here is a closer view of that one.

Fossilized Piece of Antler.

And here is an ever closer view that shows the nice color and texture.

Closeup of Fossil Antler.

I walked a long distance today because I wanted to check out a particular location that I have not seen for quite a while.  It wasn't much good for detecting, but I did pick up the fossils on the way.

As I often say, when conditions aren't good for finding one type of thing they might be good for finding other things.

Today I didn't do any detecting, but kept myself entertained with wood, stone, fossils and shells while I scouted a few beaches.

I'll be showing you some more things I learned tomorrow or some other time real soon.  I think that is all for today.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net