7/21/15 Report - Something You Need To Know For Water Hunting. Treasure Coast Waterways Cleanup. Junkyard Car Museum.

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

See link below for details.

I have been looking at lot of very extensive studies concerning the movement of beach sand.  Some involve institutions such as Woods Hole and the Department of Defense.  Some involve laying fields of state of the art sensors, both in the beach and out into the water.  Some of the studies cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and the reports are full of technical jargon and mathematical formulas.  Those studies are only concerned with the movement of sand.  While I am interested in the flow of sand, I am also interested in how other objects such as coins move, and those studies to not address that, although I can draw some conclusions about that from what they do find.  A lot of the studies found nothing much beyond what I've learned through personal observation, which pretty much amazes me.

If you use the following link and browse around that site, you'll be able to find some of those studies.

Here is a link to a nice animation of that site.   When you get to the site, click on the multimedia section to view the animation showing the moving sandbar.  You might want to repeat it a several times.

http://www.whoi.edu/main/topic/changing-shorelines-erosion

 (Animation by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

The location of sandbars can protect or endanger the face of the beach. As undertow drives sandbars away from the shoreline and further out to sea, waves break further from the shore. When sandbars are pushed closer to shore, waves break closer and run further up the beach. (From the Woods Hole site.)

I took some clips from the animation and added some things.  I added the two vertical lines so you could better estimate the position of the moving sand.  Orange dots illustrate coins.

In the first clip shown below, the sand bar is out and the currents are moving the sand in, but not the coins.  The arrows indicate the direction the sand is moving.

When the sand bar moves in, but the water velocity is not sufficient to move objects such as coins, the coins that were originally lost on the bar when it was out end up in deeper water (see below).  Objects lost in the dip in front of the sand bar (above) get buried, as shown below.

Compare the second picture to the first and note the relative position of the coins.  There are also times when the coins will move as well as the sand, but that isn't the situation illustrated here.  It is about trigger and drop points again.  Water force can be sufficient to move just sand or strong enough to move both sand and other objects.  Sand and coins can move at different times, and at the same time but at different speeds.

Sand bars are generally moving, sometimes very slowly.  As I've said before, items lost on the eroding side will be uncovered if they were previously covered, while items recently lost on the other side of the bar will get buried when the sand is moving in that direction.

Here are a couple more clips from the animation.  These show situations where the undertow moves the sand out.

When there is sufficient undertow, items as well as sand can be dragged out.  The clip below shows the bar moved out.  The bar has flattened some (below).  It could continue to move out until it looks very much like that shown in the first clip. When the velocity of the water drops the sand drops out of transport and piles up.

If you are aware of the sands position and how it is moving, that is a big step towards knowing where you'll find objects when you are metal detecting in shallow water.  Sometimes objects get uncovered and sometimes buried, and sometimes the objects are moved too.

Whichever way the sand is moving, objects are moving in some relation to that, again depending upon the trigger points and drop points of the sand and objects.

I hope the illustrations are clear and helpful.  I had a hard time getting them fixed the way I wanted, and still didn't get it exactly like I wanted.

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The Treasure Coast waterway cleanup will take place July 25.  I hope you will support this.  Anyone can volunteer.  It would be a great thing for clubs.

Here is the link for all the information.

http://www.tcwaterwaycleanup.com/

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 Nestled in a north Georgia forest, over 4,000 classic cars decorate 32 acres that have been turned into a junkyard museum. Owner Walter Dean Lewis' parents started the business in 1931 as a general store that also sold auto parts. Lewis grew the collection, which had just 40 cars in the '70s, over time...

Lewis stopped selling parts about six years ago, soon after realizing he could sustain the business more as a museum, charging $15 for visitors just looking, and $25 for photographers. He estimates that 95 percent of the people who come through the six miles of trails are photographers...

Here is the link for the rest of the story.  Sorta neat.

http://www.aol.com/article/2015/07/20/ap-photos-in-rural-georgia-a-junkyard-of-classic-cars/21211215/

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I can't believe it.  That little two foot bump in the Treasure Coast surf predictions for next week has disappeared.  We're back to one foot for who knows how long.

Happy hunting.
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

10/6/14 Report - Water Got High On The Beach But LIttle To No Erosion. Fossils and Sea Glass On Beach Today. Beach Crime. Valuable Old Books.

Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.BlogSpot.com.



First Beach I Looked At This Morning
Notice how the water had been up over the berm.

I got out to look at the beach this morning.  The higher surf yesterday didn't do much. I did see some small cuts, but only at a location where sand had been dumped.  Renourishment sand will usually disappear quickly.  It is out of place and the ocean will quickly reclaim it. 




I call cuts in renourishment sand superficial.  They seldom produce anything good.  Things that were brought in with the sand can wash out when the sand washes away.  Most often it is filled with trash.

Second Beach I Visited This Morning.
It was just as sandy as the first.

This morning I could tell that the water had been up pretty high on both of the beaches.  In the first photo, you can see where the water washed up over the berm.

At the second beach that I looked at, the water had been nearly back to the dunes. 

At the second beach, there were a good number of shells near the water.  There was a dip right in front of the beach.  There was also iron, sea glass, and pieces of fossils in with the shells.

I found some nice large pieces of sea glass, but mostly broken pieces of fossil.

There were some pieces of copper and unidentifiable old pieces of iron of various sizes and shapes on the front beach.  A few pieces of titanium too. 

I saw four police cars at the beach.  It seems there was a lot of activity.  One cop told me that a window was broken and a purse stolen from the front seat of a parked car at one beach access, and a charging iPhone was stolen from another.

Bunch of Shells and Dip In Front of Beach.

Don't leave valuables in your car.  Be careful where you park and be aware of who is around.










I like to find non-metallic items too.  Here are a couple of examples of the types of things that were  found in with the shell today.

Couple Fossilized Turtle Scutes.

Here are a couple fossil turtle scutes.  I think both are nucal (from the center line).  And both are from the edge of the shell, either front or back.

And below is a piece of sea glass.  It is unusually shaped and thick.  Doesn't look like it came from a bottle, but I don't have any idea what it did come from.  The odd shape doesn't show from the photo.

Those are just a few examples.  When there are fossils there very well could be a shark tooth or something else interesting.

And if there is sea glass, there could also be an older piece of pottery or porcelain.



Sotheby's had an auction of old exploration and discovery books.  Old books like that can be good resources for research, but they can also be worth big bucks.  Some of these contain early maps.

http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/2014/exploration-discovery-library-franklin-brooke-hitching-l14412.html?cmp=email_l14412_0914_3_AURexample1_event_button1

Thick Piece of Sea Glass Found in Shells Today.

Check shell piles.  You never know when you might see a piece of black glass, Kang Hsi porcelain or whatever.  They do appear from time to time.


It looks like the Treasure Coast will have a two to three foot surf for a while now.

The tides are not as flat as they have been, but we still are not having negative low tides.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide @Comcast.net