Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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Frederick Douglass Beach Monday Morning
Photo by Steve M.
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Steve M., who visited Turtle Trail and sent photos to the blog Sunday, visited Frederick Douglass beach yesterday and sent photos and the following report.
My wife and I went to Douglas beach about 9:30. Hadn’t been here in weeks so not sure how it has changed. An old cut about 4 foot.High tide hits it. Mostly trash and modern coins. Surf is 3 foot and calmer winds today. Real nice cool day.
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Frederick Douglass Monday Morning
Steve M.
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You can tell a lot from the photos. Notice the convex beach. That is not a good sign.
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Frederick Douglass Beach Monday Morning.
Photo by Steve M.
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Frederick Douglass Beach Monday Morning.
Photo by Steve M.
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Alberto visited Turtle Trail yesterday (Monday). Here is what he said.
Read today's post and saw the photos by Steve M. I stopped by TT on Sunday afternoon and saw the cuts and figured maybe Monday early am they might be better, didn't happen like I thought see attached photos. There were 3 other detectorist already hunting at 8 am. I tried but nothing.
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Turtle Trail Monday
Alberto S.
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Seems like a good time to look at a simplified beach diagram.
In relatively calm surf, you have small waves that vary little from the water's surface. A small cut might be created as shown above. In that case, the water simply moves a little of the sand down the slope a little way.
The red areas are where the layers of older coins are in this case. There is a layer from contemporary salvage efforts in the dunes, typically buried about two feet. A layer under the back beach, which could be deposited either by coins eroding out of the slope at high surf or being washed up during high surf and erosion. That layer can be changed from time to time as erosion occurs and then the layer is covered again. Then there is the deepest layer near bedrock, which was exposed during extreme conditions in the past.
For the layer in front of the dunes to be uncovered the erosion has to be farther back than the erosion shown in this diagram. Coins can end up on the surface when the back dunes erode too. High surf can undercut the dunes and coins slide down onto the beach, where they can stay until the get covered again. They can also be swept out into eroded areas on the front beach.
The coins at the deepest layers have to be uncovered before they can be washed up onto the beach. The amount of sand in the water is important, because it protects those layers and protects the beach.
I just wanted to show that the majority of the time, the various layers of older coins and things are covered. It takes a good bit of movement to uncover the coins in the water so they can be washed up. It also takes erosion moving back and deep for mid-beach layers to be uncovered. And it takes the water eroding the dunes for those coins to reach the beach.
Most of the time the water is only moving the same old sand in and out in the most active area and not affecting the old coin bearing layers at all. Notice that the green area where the most movement of sand occurs does not touch any of the coin layers (red).
Of course the diagram is a crude oversimplification, but I think it might still help a little.
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The 9:19 PM Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral was very brightly seen over the Treasure Coast last night. I saw it, as did my 93 year old mother, who reminisced about how as a child she used to marvel at any airplane flew over their rural area.
You can see many nice photos and articles about the launch online.
https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2020/01/06/spacex-vaults-falcon-9-to-orbit-from-cape-canaveral-with-60-more-starlink-satellites/2826868001/
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Today the surf is still small on the Treasure Coast. Thursday and Friday it might be more like 4 - 7 feet.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net