10/5/17 Report - What Was Found During September 2017. Beach Conditions. Another Hurricane.

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

Little Erosion to Back Dunes As Seen Yesterday Afternoon.

 The water has been getting pretty high on the beaches.  Note the new erosion to the base of the dunes.  Also notice that this is renourishment sand with planted sea oats.  There were a few spots where the newly exposed sand was not the newest, but also not real old.  That older sand was also dumped there, but contained some old objects, unlike the most recent layer of renourishment sand.

John Brooks Beach Yesterday Afternoon

Waves Hitting Beach Yesterday Afternoon.

Notice the flat area in front of the beach.  The sand bar seems to go out maybe twenty yards.  That is protecting the beach to some extent and also covering anything is the shallow water.

The slope was mushy, especially in the middle.

The water was hitting the beach straight on instead of a slicing angle.  That is one thing we've been missing since Irma hit us.

I used to always say it take more than a big surf.  I don't think I really have to say that anymore.  I think it has become common knowledge.

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Thursday Surf, Swells and Wind for the Fort Pierce Area.
Source: MagicSeaWeed.com

Notice that the surf starts to decrease a little today.  It will continue decreasing for a couple of days.

Another Hurricane.
Source: nhc.noaa.gov

Can you believe it?  Another hurricane.  It looks like it is headed towards the Mobile/Tallahassee area.  Being to the right side of the storm, the wind direction probably won't be much good for beach erosion on the Treasure Coast.

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Well, the most recent blog poll has just concluded.

Poll Results.
Source: TreasureBeachesReport.blogspot.com

This has been an unusual period of time with three hurricanes affecting us to some extent or another during the month of September.  All three send us a good high surf, yet none of them really ripped the beaches.  There was some moving of sand, but it was not the kind of movement that leaves big cuts and the back dunes weren't hit hard despite all the high surf.  I believe that was due two to factors: first the large amount of renourishment sand in front of and on the beaches, and secondly, the poor angle of the swells.  Most of the waves were hitting from the east.  We didn't get those nice slicing northeast winds and waves.

Anyhow, there were some things found.  Some of the beaches reminded me a bit of Sandy, which produced some beach cobs - more than these hurricanes produced.

The total number of votes was 71 and the total number of respondents was 63.  (People were allowed to select more than one response.)  That is a good sample size.  Thanks to all who responded and helped us all learn a little something.

Only three of the 63 respondents reported finding treasure coins.  That was a lot of storm and surf compared to the number of finds.

I should have specified "beach" finds, but I suppose most finds reported were from the beach.  There were a couple other refinements I should have made to the poll, but didn't think to do it at the beginning.

So what we see is that a few treasure coins were found.  Not many though.  It wasn't anything deserving more than a 2 rating on my 5-point Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Scale.  I didn't issue many numerical ratings due to the fact that I wasn't able to get out to observe the beaches enough to issue precise numerical ratings.  Hopefully moving forward, I'll be able to get back to doing that more.

I didn't get any pictures of the precious metal find - coin or artifacts.  Somebody said they were hoping to see pictures of those.  I know that one person who reported finding a precious metal treasure coin also reported finding a precious metal artifact.

I did get a lot of pictures, which I posted, of many of the other metallic finds, including the many musket ball and lead finds.  I'm sure you saw those.  I commented on those in previous posts.

I also posted pictures of some wood finds.  I suppose there were also some shards found, but I didn't get any pictures of those to post.

There were ten reported finds of silver U. S. coins.  As you might suspect, and as is supported by the poll results, they will often surface first.

Almost half of the reported responses (not finds) were some kind of shipwreck related find.  So even though conditions evidently weren't great for finding cobs, they weren't bad for coming up with some kind of shipwreck related find.

21 of the 63 respondents found some sort of shipwreck related find.  That isn't bad.

As usual, if you found one shipwreck related item, the chances are that you found more than one.  Previous polls have verified that.  If you find one cob, you have a very good chance of finding more than one  I know that at least one respondent reported finding both a precious metal coin and a precious metal artifact.

I previously posted pictures of many of the lead finds and some of the wood finds, I'd be pleased to post pictures of some of the other finds if you would send them.

Overall, I'm sure everybody was disappointed with the relatively small amount of treasure relative to the number and size of the storms.  Perhaps there were more finds in other parts of the state that experienced more beach erosion.

It sure was better than the hunting we had on the beaches all summer.  The storms did us some good.  And it isn't over yet.

I'm encouraged by the result.  I think the results generally supported my observations, even though there were many times when it seemed things might turn out better than they did.  We got the surf, but not the angles.  And there was all of that renourishment sand still out there protecting the dunes and front beach.  Still a good number of interesting things were found.

I'm sure a few more will be found this month.

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More polls to come.

Also I'll be talking about detecting in renourishment sand.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net