8/2/17 Report - New Distrubance Forms In The Gulf. Using Patterns and Technologies for Finding Detecting Sites. Device You Will Want To Have.

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

Source: nhc.noaa.gov

It looks like the Gulf is starting to produce a lot of weather.  We now have a new disturbance in about the same area that Emily formed.  At this point it only has a small chance of becoming a cyclone in the next 48 hours, but that is the way Emily started too, and Emily formed very rapidly.  Emily is no longer a tropical storm and is headed out to sea.

There is another disturbance out in the Atlantic, but it is too early to be too concerned about that one.

Expect another week of one and two-foot surf.  The tides aren't big now.

AFTERNOON UPDATE:  Emily and both of the other disturbances have now disappeared.

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When I post links, they usually provide some type of clue or lesson.  That is definitely the case with the next article.  Here is a brief excerpt.


...So Stirn set out to develop a model to predict the location of more, similar villages.

He first determined all of the main traits that the newfound villages had in common — namely, that they were positioned on south-facing, sunny slopes near whitebark pine stands above 3,200 meters in elevation....

I often talk about patterns: weather patterns, beach dynamics, coin distributions, etc.  There are signs or clues to the location of treasures.  It is all about increasing the probability of success by understanding patterns.  

You might occasionally find something by wandering around randomly ( the blind hog occasionally picks up an acorn ), but you'll be much more successful if you recognize the signs or clues and patterns.  Treasure doesn't just fall out of the sky, it ends up where it is found as the result of human behavior and the laws of nature.  People are somewhat predictable, as is nature.  

Patterns can be complex, especially when it comes to treasure, and we seldom get the whole picture, but the more you understand the patterns, the better you will do.

In the article that I am referring to, several signs predicted the location of Native American villages that were previously unknown.  The newly located villages were located on south-facing slopes that were sunny, above 3200 meters of elevation near stands of whitebark pine.

There are signs or patterns that will help you located all kinds of things, such as metal detecting sites, shipwreck sites, coin holes, good jewelry beaches, etc.  I've talked about all of those things in the past.

The particular pattern that you will be looking for depends upon the kinds of sites you want to find and the types of treasures you are hunting.

The article was talking about Native American sites, but there are more general lessons that you can take from it.  Here is another excerpt.

Then, using Landsat satellite imagery, Stirn and his colleagues identified whitebark pine stands in the northern Winds that best fit their model’s description.

Ancient village sites were discovered in Wyoming after scientists predicted where the would be found based upon site characteristics...

They used Landsat satellite imagery to locate the village sites after they knew what to look for.  As I mentioned in a recent post, you can use webcam images to survey beaches, and you can use other internet tools such as Google Earth to locate good detecting sites.

When you make a find, observe where it was found.  Ask yourself why the item was there, how it ended up where it was found, and what are the clues or signs that might have led you to believe that it might be there.

Here is the link to the article I've been talking about.

http://westerndigs.org/thirteen-prehistoric-villages-discovered-in-wyoming-mountains-may-redraw-map-of-tribal-migrations/

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This is an inexpensive device that I've used for a lot of years.  It still works and is very handy.

It is a battery tester and works on batteries of various sizes.  If this one ever quit working I'd get another right away.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

3/27/14 Report - Lots of Clad, Movement of Ocean Debris, Trained Dolphins, and Treasure Coast Conditions

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

A lot of clad was found by Steve of Iowa who hunted the Treasure Coast yesterday at some of the swimming beaches from South Hutchinson Island to Stuart.

Here is what Steve said.

In town for one day, got up early and hit Jensen Beach. Saw a long cut so
I headed right out on the mid- to south end while some guy was at the
north end. Got some clad and then hit the fisherman beach about a mile
south of Jensen. A big cut there where I found more clad. Then I hit
Stuart beach and got the most clad there, spread mostly south. Total take
was almost four dollars. Lots of fun. Met a fellow from Tennessee who is a
coin collector who wants to start detecting so I gave him some ideas on
detectors. He had a pocketful of older coins and gave me a 1916 Mercury
dime.

Steve from Iowa

Thanks for your report Steve.  Keep it up.

There are still a lot of people from up North down here.  The day before yesterday I talked to a family from Washington State who were in the area for a couple of weeks. 


There has been a lot of talk about ocean debris lately, especially as they hunt for debris from the Malaysian air liner.

You might remember me talking about how debris from the Japan tsunami circulated.  A model has been developed by the International Pacific Research Center to show how debris from the tsunami is distributed.  At first only currents were taken into account, but later the effect of wind upon lighter materials was also added to the model.

Here is an article about the model.

http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/news/marine_and_tsunami_debris/2012/12_08_tsunami_debris_windage_animations.pdf

And here is the model in action.  Watch the date at the top of the animation for the date as the model proceeds.

The animation shows high windage items as bright colors and low windage items as dark color.  So the items that are high windage, those items that are affected most by wind are bright orange, while those affected least by wind are dark purple.

http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/users/hafner/PUBLIC/TSUNAMI_DEBRIS/WINDAGE_03/ANIMATION_1/movie_windages.gif

You can see how the lightest items hit the North American continent first.  Some being turned north and some south.

You can also see how the highest windage and lightest materials eventually get separated completely and caught in limbo between currents making a line to the south of the main debris field.

Lately items like heavy logs have been hitting Hawaii.

What does all of this have to due with treasure hunting or metal detecting? 

Imagine a shipwreck, say in 1715, in which a ship gets torn apart.  There are materials that float and those that don't.  And there are materials that don't float by themselves but are in or on other materials that do float, such as on wood sections of the hull, or in boxes, or olive jars, etc.

The debris from the tsunami covered a good portion of the Pacific, some hitting from Alaska to such far away places as Hawaii.  You can see how the current circles around the North Pacific.

The tsunami debris animation might help you think bout how shipwreck debris might separate from and be dispersed before finally landing on a beach or ocean bottom.  We tend to think that everything sinks right to the bottom.    And salvage vessels are usually dealing with some of the heavier items, that without being attached to or riding in or on other things will settle to the bottom relatively quickly, but if you think about what this model is showing, timbers, sealed olive jars, and other things might end up very far from where a shipwreck occurred.  Even heavy items that are embedded in or attached to wood, boxed in crates, or sealed in olive jars or other containers could float off a good distance.

Of course we do have more light debris than would have been the case in previous centuries.  They didn't have Styrofoam or plastics, for example.  Nonetheless, I think this model is helpful when it comes to thinking about debris fields.  There may be things that end up very far from the site of the shipwreck.

The Soviet Union began training dolphins and other marine mammals to locate mines, mark underwater obstacles and detect – and if necessary kill – enemy frogmen in the 1960s. The program is shrouded in myth, but the dolphins are believed to have been trained to kill frogmen with special harpoons or knives fitted to their backs, or drag them to the surface to be captured.

They were also reported to be fitted with packets of explosives and trained to carry out suicide attacks against enemy vessels, using their natural sonar to distinguish Soviet submarines from potential targets.

Here is the link for more of that story.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/26/in-final-naval-insult-russia-seizes-ukrainian-spy-dolphins-trained-to-kill-enemies-and-find-underwater-mines/

I always thought it would be handy to have a trained dolphin or otter to do some salvage work.  I'm sure you could train them to bring back interesting looking objects.


On the Treasure Coast, the cuts that I showed yesterday disappeared by this morning.  Those were  cuts in natural rather than replenishment sand. 

The wind is coming out of the East now.  That is what was expected.  I took a look this morning even though I saw exactly what I expected.

You can probably find some more clad and modern stuff, but conditions for finding older things are  no better than a 1 on my rating scale.

These cold fronts have been coming through quickly this year.  We've been getting a little bit of north wind and then it all turns around before much develops.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.ne

9/26/11 Report - Analyzing a Beach

Written by the TreassureGuide exclusively for treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

House of Refuge This Weekend.

Thanks to Bernie C. for the photo.

What do you do when you first step onto a treasure beach? Your answer to that question will have more to do with your rate of success than what detector you use.

The first thing a lot of people do is turn the detector on and start walking to a favorite spot. Some, who perhaps don't have a favorite spot yet, will start wandering around on the beach without any particular plan or direction. They just go where they feel like going. And others are guided by a general feeling that one area or another might be a good place to look.

What I'd recommend is first finding a good place to view as much of the beach as possible - someplace where you can see the back dunes and down in the water and also north and south as far as possible. Slowly scan the entire beach. Look for any dips and get a general feel for what the beach is doing.

Sketch Showing Cross Section of Theoretical Beach.

A beach has four dimensions that are important to me - length, width, depth, and time.

The area of a beach that changes the most is obviously the front beach because of all the water action there. The middle and back beach changes much less frequently and mostly when the waves and tides are high.

Since the back dunes change less often and the movement of sand is most affected by the water, first check out what the water is doing to the front of the beach.

You can tell a lot just by looking at a beach, but to really know what is going on, it is helpful to have a mental model of the beach as it has changed over time - days, months, and even years.

The sketch above represents a model of a theoretical beach showing a cross section and the different levels.

It is helpful to know where the bedrock is. On the sketch it is shown near the bottom. Often you won't know where the bedrock is.

At different times the beach will be cut back and down, sometimes very deeply exposing layers that have not been exposed for a very long time, and at other times only few inches or feet of sand are moved from the front beach. Those smaller cuts will quickly filled again, usually within a few days.

The result of all of that movement is some layers of sand that are deep and that have been exposed only a few times over the centuries and on top of that are layers of sand that are exposed and moved frequently.

You will seldom see sand on a front beach that has not washed in, and it is rare to see so much erosion that you see layers that have not been exposed for a long time. Usually you will only see sand that was deposited relatively recently.

When the back dunes are low and far back, you will seldom find coins on a front beach that have washed down from the dunes rather than washing in from the ocean. Old coins will occasionally wash out of the dunes and down onto a front beach, but that doesn't happen very often, especially on beaches where the dunes are low and far back from the front beach.

Returning to the layers. The more you know about the various layers of a beach the better off you will be.

The above sketch illustrates how I conceptualize a beach. The layers are shown from layer A, the bedrock, and going up to the top layers of the dunes.

You can learn where the different layers are and can learn to identify some of them by sight.

You can't get a good mental model of a beach unless you carefully inspect it a number of times. Landmarks will help you immensely. It is difficult to simply look and tell how much sand has moved without measuring the change relative to some stationary points.

Those landmarks can be dunes that haven't moved for a long time, trees, rocks or anything that will not move much. Caution: some things, like tree stumps, will move even though you might think they are firmly anchored.

The type of sand or beach material will also provide indications of movement.

When you dig a hole, notice any layers that you see. Notice layers of shell, black sand, clay, or different colors or sand of different textures. When you dig a hole, you'll normally only see some of the top layers that move a lot.

Deeper layers towards the back of the beach will change much less often.

Try to get a fix on which way the sand is moving. Is it building on the beach front? Is the cut moving farther back towards the dunes? Is the sand being washed down the slope and into the surf?

Most people know to look for cuts, but the position of the cut and the depth of the cut are both important. Cuts can be high or low on the beach, deep or shall, long or short, cut into new or old sand or other materials. When cuts occur far back on the beach and are deep, you are getting into layers that probably haven't been exposed for a long time and may contain old objects.

You need to make a number of careful observations before you can construct a useful mental model of a particular beach. After you know a beach well, then you don't need to observe it as frequently to understand what is going on.

It also helps to know where past cuts have been at particular times. How far back and how deep has a particular beach cut at different times? That information will help you a lot.

Lets say that a beach eroded down to very near the water line and back almost all the way to the dunes after a hurricane. That means that that all of the sand there now has accumulated since that time. That's obvious enough, but what are the implications?

That depends to some extent upon how the area filled. Was the new sand washed in from the ocean, dragged down from the dunes, or both, or moved in from the north or south of the cut? Sometimes you'll have a layer that was dragged down from the dunes and then covered by sand that washed in from the ocean.

Were there coins or artifacts at the level of the cut before it was refilled, or in the sand that filled the cut? If so, some might still be waiting there.

These are all important questions.

If you've worked a particular beach a lot, you will be able to identify different levels. You might know what the different layers look like that have accumulated at different times.

Sand will vary is texture, color, and composition. It is sometimes helpful to know where the various layers are and when they were deposited. You might see them appear from time to time and perhaps be move or covered again.

In the back dunes it is a bit easier to identify layers where items of different ages of items are found. Those layers will mix when the dunes erode and the sand falls down or is dragged onto the beach.

One of the most desirable situations is when layers are exposed that haven't been uncovered for a long time. There are levels at some beach locations, particularly back in the dunes, that have probably not been uncovered for a few hundred years. There are probably also layers on the middle beach, although much deeper that probably have not been uncovered for a very long time.

Well, I better wrap that up for today. I could go on for a long time about this stuff. I'll have to continue with this some other time.



Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.

There is one tropical disturbance just north of the leeward islands. It has a chance of developing. And there is Philippe, which is headed into the middle of the Atlantic.

The wind is from the south. There are a lot of rain showers just off shore this morning.

Seas are running less than two feet and will remain relatively calm for the next few days.

Conditions for finding cobs on the Treasure Coast remain poor.


Bernie reports about 4 feet of sand was recently removed down at Bathtub Beach and tree stumps were newly exposed. A good amount of clad coins were found there.

That's it for today.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net