2/2/18 Report - One Eroding Beach That Serves As A Good Illustration. Best Overall Treasure Coast Treasure Hunting Book. Pirate Fest.

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

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park.
Photo by Joe D.

I've posted a lot about the Fort Pierce South Jetty Park lately.  While it is not a place where you will find a lot of treasure coins, it is interesting as an illustration of beach erosion.  It erodes a lot!  It seems like they renourish it all the time but it just keeps eroding.

Joe D. sent me these photos along with the following email message.

Just wanted to show you what i saw and why i hunted South Beach Park the other day! This was the only beach i looked at that day that had both a mid beach cut, and a firm beach with shells and rocks! While i didn't spend a bunch of time there, at least i was able to locate some coins and such!

Also, the picture of Ft Pierce South Jetty Park shows a higher tide verson of what Gaylen C. Sent that you posted! I've hunted there before, but this time i noticed that MOST of the rocks that are exposed are not from lower beach erosion (older sand erosion) but from the fill that keeps eroding from the cliff! ( newer sand erosion) It is very rocky fill and can be deceiving, in that it looks older than it is when it runs out toward the ocean! I hope that makes sense! I know its hunted a lot, and i haven't found much there at all!

I was having few issues with my detector setup that day, and was wondering if it was hindering my hunt, or weather the combination of poor conditions, and the number of detectorists that hunt the area where some of the reason for so few finds! So I hunted a park near home with same setup to iron out the kinks! I was there about two hours and did ok, and fixed some issues! ( Pic) So my conclusion is that all factors are correct!...

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park
Photo by Joe D.

There are two steps on this beach.  This is the mid-beach cut that Joe referred to.  The larger cliff is at the back of the beach.

Notice also the small wind blown sand ridges by the footprints.  The ridges will run about perpendicular to the wind direction.

This beach isn't a good indicator beach.  It will erode when there is very little other erosion on the Treasure Coast.

Rocks and Shells Near the Water Line.
Photo by Joe D.

Although the rocks are coming from the fill, they are from very old material.  I think it was dug from the intercoastal near the port, but there is definitely some VERY old stuff in that fill.

Joe's Finds.

I always recommend that you pay attention to what is being found and what is not being found.  The first thing that jumps out to me is the lack of nickels. 

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I just read through Numismatic Archaeology of North America: a Field Guide by Akin, Bard and Akin, published 2016.  It might be OK for an archaeology student, but it didn't provide any real revelations for me.  There were a few interesting ideas, but it sure wouldn't be worth the purchase price, which is quite lofty.  There wasn't much about actual sites, and nothing about the Spanish Colonial sites or the Treasure Coast shipwrecks.  Most of the author's experience seemed to be related to shell money and Asian money found on the west coast of the United States.

One of the more interesting points was about the various uses of money.  Coins can be many things besides circulating currency.  That discussion was interesting.  A coin, as you know, can be sewn to clothing and used in fashion, or used as a votive or religious offering, and for various other purposes.

One thing they mentioned that caught my attention because I have long wondered how coins found on the beach get bent in half.   I read that coins were sometimes bent as a superstitious way of changing ones luck.  It could be that some were intentionally bent for that purpose, although I think there are ways that they can get bent by nature.  I've mentioned that once or twice before.

As is often the case, the bibliography of the book is the biggest value of the book.

If you want to read about Treasure Coast treasure hunting in general, there is one book that I recommend above all others.  It is The Rainbow Chasers Tricentennial Yearbook by T. L. Armstrong and Tommy Gore.  It is published by Sigmum Ops.  240 jam packed 8.5 by 11 pages.

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Pirate Fest starts today at Veterans Memorial Park in Fort Pierce.  It runs Feb. 2 through Feb. 4.

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... The FBI once sent a high-level official to Facebook, begging for some of its personal information — information on private citizens...

And now, besides having our phone numbers and addresses and birthdays and a list of our friends and our personal histories and our credit-card numbers (if we use it for Facebook “boosts”), as well as logging what we read and chat about, Zuckerberg’s company is ready to sell hardware with microphones and cameras that would be placed in your home. Meanwhile, both Facebook and Twitter send certain posts to target customers who they deem are extremists to counter their views....

Here is a link for the rest of that article.

http://spiritdaily.org/blog/commentary/little-big-brother

I don't use Facebook.  I very much resent how companies such as Facebook and Google try to get as much of your information as they can.  They don't need that second phone number, or any phone number for that matter, and they don't need your social security number unless you do a certain amount of business, but they'll get it if they can.  If there is anything to resist these days, I would rank that as being one of the top ones.

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I don't expect any real change in beach conditions today.  We are still having big tides.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

12/5/17 Report - Wabasso Beach Report. Best Resource I Know Of For Overview of History of 1715 Fleet Salvage.

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

Wabasso Sunday
Photo by Eric H.

Eric H sent in these photos and a report on his Sunday Wabasso hunt.  Here is what he said.

Just wanted to let you know I went out to do a little hunting today ( Sunday ) at Wabasso beach and had plenty of targets, but nothing exciting...

What was interesting is that I was getting deep targets.  I found an 18 inch long piece of rebar that was buried 20 inches deep and my Sea Hunter screamed out the signal. I was really excited there for a while until I saw that it was rebar. 

I got one iron target that was about 22 inches deep (lucky for me it was high enough on the beach that I could retrieve it, if it had been in the wet sand I would have had one heck of a time getting it out.  As it was I had to dig a huge hole.  One thing that surprised me was that I found all the heavy items higher up on the beach, and the trash aluminum was at the low tide line in heavy shells (where I thought the better targets were going to be). There were virtually no items in the small holes and pockets in the low tide line/shallow water.

Miscellaneous Targets Frm Wabasso Sunday

Photo by Eric H.

Depth Eric Was Digging.
Photo by Eric H.

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Thanks for the photos and report Eric.  Your report should help anyone interested in evaluating beach conditions.

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Detectorists remove a lot of junk from the beaches.  That is a benefit that the public doesn't realize.

It doesn't hurt to pick up some of those ropes, flip flops and plastic bags while you are out there.

Here is an article about how such things endanger the sea turtles.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Sea_turtles_sad_fate_from_restaurant_menus_to_plastic_soup_999.html

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The best book on 1715 Fleet salvage history that I've seen is the 241 page large format The Rainbow Chaser's Tricentennial Yearbook by T. L. Armstrong and Tommy Gore, published by Signum OPS, 2015.  I was sent a copy of that book some time ago by Jon Morgan, who does the Lets Talk Metal Detecting podcasts after he interviewed the primary author, and I found it to be the best and most comprehensive summary that I have seen.  There are sections on the wrecks, the finds, stories, techniques, dig boats, and the finders.  

The first sentence of the foreword refers to the Donald Rumsfield comment,"We don't know what we don't know."  That is something I said in this blog before I knew anyone famous said it, and it is something good to remember, especially as it relates to treasure hunting.  Sometimes things become commonly accepted as fact and, but when new information turns up, we sometimes have to change our minds.

There is new information concerning the location of at least part of one 1715 Fleet wreck that will be coming out before long, but I can't say more about that now.  I'm sure it will be published.

If you have access to the Rainbow Chaser's book, you might want to check out page 152, which is part of a section entitled Anchoring.  You'll see a photo taken by the author entitled A Mangled Anchor, Destroyed by the Reef  that looks very much like the one Darrel S. found and which I recently posted, though Darrel's was not mangled.  

Anyhow, good book.  Thanks Jon.

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In the past I wrote a lot about beach dynamics.  I learned a lot of that when I was hunting modern gold on the beaches of South Florida before I moved to the Treasure Coast.   In retrospect, I can see that it was a good place to start detecting.  The crowds left a lot of coins on the beach, which made it easier to identify patterns.  As I said yesterday, beside goals, you need a way to quantitative measure to evaluate what you are doing.  Careful monitoring will teach you a lot by itself.  Learning is easier when you have a lot of data points.  Careful observation and constant monitoring helps the learning process no matter what you are trying to do.

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I have a good post started for tomorrow.  It is about a ring lost by a famous person eighty years ago that was recently found on a Florida beach and returned to the family.

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Don't wait until later to do the things that you want to do.  You might think you'll have all the time in the world to do those things when you are retired, but things can happen and it might not turn out like you expected.

The moon is beautiful and the tides are big.  The surf will be increasing a little in the next couple of days.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net