7/13/20 Report - Blue China Shipwreck. Gold Prices Increasing. Ancient Necklaces Made By Early Sea Shell Collectors.

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

Site of BA02

Source: See link to Jacksonville "Blue China" Shipwreck below.

I found a good study of the "Blue China" wreck, which lies about 70 miles east/southeast of Jacksonville.  The study was conducted by Odyssey Marine Explorations and provides a lot of great information and photos.  Above is one illustration of the site.

Plates and Jars on the "Blue China" Wreck Site.
Source: Odyssey Marine Explorations Report (link below)

Source: See link below.

There is  a lot to see in this report.  Here is the link.

Jacksonville "Blue China" shipwreck.

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Source: Kitco.com

Gold has been doing well.  As you can see from the above chart, the price has increased from just over $1400/oz. to over $1800/oz. in the last year.

After peaking back in 2011, it has almost reached those levels again recently.

Source: Kitco.com.

Silver, on the other hand, has not be doing so well.  Silver was nearly $50/oz. back in 2010, but is below $20/oz. today.

Source: Kitco.com.

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Picking up seashells has been a human habit for almost as long as there have been humans. Archaeologists found clam shells mingled with other artifacts in Israel’s Misliya Cave, buried in sediment layers dating from 240,000 to 160,000 years ago. The shells clearly weren’t the remains of Paleolithic seafood dinners; their battered condition meant they’d washed ashore after their former occupants had died....

Shell collectors at Misliya seemed to like mostly intact shells, and there’s no sign that they decorated or modified their finds. But 40,000 years later and 40km (25 miles) away, people at Qafzeh Cave seemed to prefer collecting clam shells with little holes near their tops. The holes were natural damage from scraping along the seafloor, but people used them to string the shells together to make jewelry or decorations. Tel-Aviv University archaeologist Daniella Bar-Yosef Mayer and her colleagues examined five shells from Qafzeh and found microscopic striations around the edges of the holes—marks that suggest the shells once hung on a string...

Here is the link to read more about that.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/ancient-seashell-beads-may-help-unravel-the-origins-of-string/

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No storms to be concerned about right now.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/12/20 Report - Very Interesting Study of Database of 1,431 Shipwrecks Lost in Florida Waters. Making Quicksand?

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

I found a very interesting study that provides a lot of useful concerning shipwrecks around Florida.  It is Shipping Losses and the Expansion of Global Capitalism: A Quantitative Analysis of Florida Shipwrecks, 1520-1890 by Chuck Meide.

Here are a couple excerpts that describe the study.

The present study is different in that instead of focusing on the material remains of wrecks in the archaeological record, it relies on shipping losses extant in the documentary record. My analysis is of a dataset of 1,431 shipwrecks lost in Florida waters between 1520 and 1890, modified from a larger database originally compiled by state underwater archaeologists in the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, Division of Historical Resources. At least one study of similar scope has been undertaken to date, that of Garrison (1989; et al 1989) which utilized a database of 4,000 shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico. Garrison’s valuable and innovative study focused primarily on spatial patterning in order to generate a predictive model of likely shipwreck locations, based on factors such as shipping routes, winds and currents, port location, historic hurricane paths, and the location of shoals, bars, barrier islands, reefs, and other hazards. The present 1 analysis, however, is less concerned with where or how the shipwrecks took place than with where they were going to or coming from, and with what commodities they were carrying. The quantification of these types of variables should expose patterns reflecting the ongoing processes of economic restructuring that took place throughout Europe and the New World between the 16th and 20th centuries...

The Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research (BAR) Shipwreck Database is a listing of 2,560 shipwrecks, dating between 1521 and 1949, all in or believed to be in Florida waters. It has been compiled using Microsoft Access 97 by BAR underwater archaeologists, mainly James Dunbar, under the direction of Dr. Roger Smith. While a summary of the geographical distribution of the wrecks in this database has been presented in Smith et al 1997 (38-39), for the most part this valuable resource has not been subject to any significant analytic study. The version I have used for this analysis dates to 1997, and no further records have been added to the database since that time (Della Scott-Ireton, personal communication, December 2003)... 

The following graph illustrates the kind of information you will find in this paper.

You can easily see the transition of the major shippers going from primarily Spanish to English to American shipwrecks.

This is only one of many informative illustrations you will find.  

There are breakdowns for cargos and shipping routes as well.

There is also a good bibliography.

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Here is another video of a beach showing a group of people turning a section of beach into quicksand by stomping their feet.

You have to see this to believe it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0CFgdMjS5w&feature=youtu.be

If you imagine the surf continually pounding the front beach, you can imagine how the sand might fluidize in a similar manner.

Thanks to DJ for that video link.

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One person pointed out that the coin in my drain/experiment was a nickel, not a quarter.  Keen eyesight.  I'm glad the photos can be seen that well.  I was thinking I should have taken better photos, but evidently they weren't that bad.

Thanks for the correction.

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I'm enjoying the Dino Hunters TV show.  It might make you more interested in finding fossils even though Florida doesn't have dinosaurs.

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The blog is getting big and a little sluggish.  I think I'm going to start a new blog, and keep the current one for old posts.  I'm sure there will be a few small problems when I start the transition.

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There are no storms to watch right now.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/11/20 Report - Beach Dynamics: Sand Liquefication and Fluidizing With Water and Air. A Little Experiment Using a New Apparatus.

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

Sand Being Aerated and Fluidized.
Source: See Nerdist.com link below.

I started my study of beach movement many years ago by just observing how old coins and objects show up on a beach after a storm. Everybody knows that happens, but I wanted to understand more than that.  I wanted to know how that happens so I could predict where and when different kinds of things would be found.  

I observed how items were uncovered by erosion,  and I pretty much understood how that happened, but I didn't understand the processes involved in how things washed up onto the beach so well.  I couldn't observe that because it was always hidden by big waves and turbulent water.  Although I had many times observed erosion and objects being uncovered and washed down the beach, I was never able to observe them as they were being washed up onto the beach so I looked for anything I could find that would explain how that happens.

Eventually I learned about liquefaction that is cause by vibrations during earthquakes.  I also studied how sand is compacted and cponsidered friction between grains and the pressure in the pores between grains.  Then there was Clark Little's photographs that showed sand appearing to flow with the water in a very fluid form.  And now I found another great illustration that shows that sand can be fluidized by pumping air into it.

When sand is infused with air so that the friction between grains is reduced, it will act very much like a fluid even without water.  Light objects will float to the surface and heavy objects will sink in it.  Here is a video that illustrates that process very well.

It is amazing.  Take a look.

https://nerdist.com/article/sand-fluid-air-bubble-fluidized-bed/

There are two videos.  You might want to watch both.

I''ve now read of three things that can cause sand to liquefy. They include vibrations, and both water and air injected into sand.   All three of those probably happen when we have big waves, and considering the Scott Little photographs along with those other principles, I now feel pretty confident that some significant amount of liquefaction of the sand occurs when the waves are big and the surf is rough.  While you normally can't see it while it is happening, you can get a look at it in Little's photos.

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I just went out and did a little experiment, although not a very good one.  It was more a matter of exploring how I could conduct experiments.

I got a three-sided length of PVC drain that I added as an extension to my down spout.  I filled the bottom of the PVC drain with a couple inches of sand and placed a quarter and a ring on the surface of lightly packed sand.  I put a hose in the top of the gutter so a pretty even stream of water flowed down the gutter and over the coins and through the chute.

Quarter and Silver Ring on Couple Inches of Lightly Packed Sand
Inside Water Shoot.

I placed the ring and coin beside each other in the drain.  When the water was running, it covered the items.  It was maybe about an inch deep over the surface of the sand and objects and flowed swiftly.

What would you expect to see?  Do you think the quarter or ring will get covered by sand?  Do you think either will be moved by the flowing water.

Here is what it looked like after a couple minutes of water flowed swiftly over the sand for a couple minutes.

Same Quarter and Ring After Exposure To a Couple Minutes of  Flowing Water.

Neither object got covered with sand at all, and neither moved very much although the ring moved a little.  That is just water on the quarter - no sand.

The quarter is low profile and was not moved.  But the water pushed on the raised edge of the ring, moving it slightly with the current.  In this experiment the amount of movement was slight.  In future experiments I could vary the amount and velocity of water and measure the movement. There are a couple of tweaks I can make to the apparatus.

A small amount of sand was washed out of the chute.

The experiment was far from perfect.  It was just a hurried attempt to see if the water chute could possibly be of some experimental value, and I think it can.  I was generally pleased with how it worked, but the experiment, if you can call it that, could have been much better.

I would not have been surprised if sand began to cover the quarter.  In this case it didn't. 

 This is a very different situation than would exist on a beach during big waves and rough water.  The water in the experiment only had horizontal velocity.   On a beach during rough surf, not only would there be more water, there would also be a drastic difference in the movement of the water.   Instead of the flowing in a steady horizontal stream, it would be lifting and crashing, pumping air and water into the sand, suspending grains and moving it in waves.  I could go into that in more detail, but will stop there for now.

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Terry T. said the pointed object I showed yesterday was a horseshoe crab tail.  That is right.  I think someone else told me that years ago, but I forgot by the time my wife found it yesterday.

Here is a good link to some information on horseshoe crabs.  Some people call them living fossils, and they are used to test vaccines.

https://oceanconservancy.org/blog/2020/05/19/11-facts-horseshoe-crabs-will-blow-mind/

 

And DJ sent a link to a picture of a Spanish Mackerel skull, and the jaw seems to match the one I showed yesterday very well.

Here is that link.

https://shadyufo.tumblr.com/post/177964562098/spanish-mackerel-skull-ive-been-on-the-lookout

Thanks guys!

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A couple days ago the counter quickly blew through 2.5 million page views.  

I'm going to have to make some changes.  I'm going to have to separate new posts on a new blogger page.  It won't cause too much inconvenience.

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Nothing of interested on the NHC maps now.

And the surf remains small and the weather hot.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/10/20 Report - Miscellaneous Old Finds: Animal and Fossil. Long-Term Risks to Manage.

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

A Horse Tooth and Three Fossil Horse Teeth.

Above are three fossil horse teeth found on the Treasure Coast.  The more colorful one is a horse tooth that is not fossilized.  

Which of the four do you think would show up first?  

The tooth that is not fossilized is less dense and would be most likely to show up on a beach when beach conditions are not good.

My wife was cleaning out a cabinet and found these items.  Not many women are lucky enough to be able to find interesting things like that in their cabinets.

Barb of Ray or Something.

The two points on the right end are individually hinged and move vertically.  Really cool.  I cana't imagine why it is like that and would like to find out more about it.

Anybody know what kind of ray or animal it comes from?

Jaw Bone From Some Kind of Toothy Fish?

Can you tell me about this one?

These two items are also not fossilized and were surface finds.

When beach conditions change, the type of finds will likely change too.

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Here is an interesting article - New wealth from the Old World: glass, jet and mirrors in the late 15th to early 16th century indigenous Caribbean  by Joanna Ostapkowicz. 

It discusses trade among the Spanish and indigenous peoples.  The indigenous were happy to get items of jet, glass and mirrors and gladly traded gold.

https://www.academia.edu/36538282/New_wealth_from_the_Old_World_glass_jet_and_mirrors_in_the_late_15th_to_early_16th_century_indigenous_Caribbean?email_work_card=title

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When you are young you aren't aware of the possible long term impact of some of your actions.  A young person probably won't think about the damage that can be caused by prolonged sun exposure.  Many years later you see the results.  If you are fair skinned, you are especially at risk for developing skin cancer, which can be a big deal.  Even the stress you put on your skeleton can eventually cause problems.  Repetitive actions can wear on joints.  Younger people don't often think of the consequences their actions can cause in the distant future.  Older people are actually dealing with those things.

There were a lot of things I did back when I was doing a lot of metal detecting that I wouldn't do today.  I wouldn't detect in the ocean at night by myself  any more, for example. 

When you are older you see the long term impacts that you didn't think about when you were younger.  And you might even think how lucky you were to avoid some of the things that could have happened.  I was (and am) a very lucky person.  It often seemed as if I was being protected.  A lot of things could have gone another way.

Young or old, you face risks all the time. You can't avoid it if you do much of anything at all.  Every time you get on the highway in a car, you take a risk,  Someone could plow into you at any time, and many people are killed in automobiles every year, but people are willing to take that risk, if they ever think about it.

There is also the risk of lost opportunity.  Doing nothing can be a risk. They talk about that in regard to finances, but a life without risk would not be very exciting, and you would certainly lose out by not participating.

Everyone has their own level of risk tolerance.  Some people are more adventurous than others.  And different people are more sensitive to different kinds of risk.

People who seem to repeat poor decisions like to blame everyone else.  They don't take responsibility for their own actions.  That makes them bitter people, and they fail to learn from their mistakes.  It turns into a downward spiraling cycle. 

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Tropical Storm Fay.
Source: nhc.noaa.gov

I mentioned Fay yesterday.  She is now headed towards New York, New Jersey and New England.

On the TreasureCoast we are supposed to have one and two foot surf for another week or two, but keep watching.  A storm could pop up any time now.

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/9/20 Report - A Few Treasure Coast Fossil Finds. Hunting Everywhere and Anywhere. Pieced Together Again.

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

Two Views of Same Big Fossil Vertebra.

I was going through some old finds this morning and found this vertebra.  I don't know what type of animal it belongs to, and I haven't done the research.  Maybe someone can help me.

I have enough old finds to keep me busy with research for the rest of my life.

Here is another unidentified vert.

Fossil Vert of Some Kind.

Here is a fossilize piece of wood or coral.  I'm not sure which.  Anybody know?

It seems to have rings like wood.

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Wit's End.

Somebody was wondering about places to metal detect when the beaches are closed.  For me that doesn't seem like much of a problem.  My answer would be anywhere and everywhere.  I've done my yard many times and there are spots that I still haven't done well be cause of interference from power lines, yet if I really want to I'm sure I can select and metal detector and settings that will handle it.

There is an overgrown lot just around the corner from me that needs to be detected.  There are old bricks on the surface, but a lot of weeds and things that need to be cleared to some extent before detecting.

And there are always edges.  For example, there is a lot of construction going on along some of the railroad tracks.  Those sites always offer something of interest.

If you have a boat, there are a lot of places that you can get too that haven't been detected much.

I never forget my first time in the woods in West Virginia, and everyone told me nothing was there.  My first outing I found a 1940s gold class ring.  I also found silver coins, artifacts from the 1800s, including a crotal bell that I've shown in this blog and arrow heads.

Sometimes it is good to try new areas.  Anyplace is worth checking.  You might have to do some prospecting rather than hunting places you know, but that could pay off.

I know that some places will be terribly junky or have other problems, but that will force you to adapt.  Maybe try some sifting.  If you work at it, you can find a way.  It might not be obvious or easy, but you might learn something in the process and eventually come up with a good site all your own.

One thing you can try in overgrown areas where you can't sweep like on the beach is switching to pinpoint or all-metals mode.  You can then move your coil slowly in around things and underthings.  It takes a little practice, but it works.

As I often say, there is always a way.  And there is always some place to hunt and something to find.

I've mentioned in this blog in the past some places where almost nobody detects that you might consider.  

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Old Dish Pieced Together.

I found this old child's dish in pieces and managed to get it glued together pretty good. One piece didn't fit well, otherwise it went back together very nicely.

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Source: nhc.noaa.gov

The system off North Carolina now has a 70% chance of becoming a cyclone in the nest 48 hours.

The low is expected to move northeastward or 
north-northeastward near or just offshore of the North Carolina 
Outer Banks.  Later today and then along the mid-Atlantic coast
tonight through Friday night. 

Happy hunting,

Treasureguide@comcast.net

 

7/8/20 Report - Mel Fisher Expeditions and Finds. Quintessential Treasures. Digital Treasure.

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

Quintessential Treasures That Fortunately Were Never Lost.
See link below.

Not lost but still representing the kind of objects that any treasure hunter might dream of finding.  I'm sure that out there somewhere are lost objects that are as finely crafter and beautiful as these.

Click here to see more Sotheby's auction items like these.

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Down south, Mel Fisher's Expeditions are working on the the well-known Atocha and Margarita sites, but also the less well known "Lost Merchant" somewhere off the east coast of Florida, and another 1622 wreck that has yet to be found.

The Magruder went sifting for emeralds and then back to the area known as the Bank of Spain.  Their latest finds included a nice emerald, 1 complete silver candlestick, a piece of a silver plate rim, some pottery shards and half of a silver coin.

The Mel Fisher museum in Sebastian will be reopening on May 8.

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The nature of treasure is changing.  I guess it always did.  Wealth is becoming less tangible.  Most transactions no longer require coins or currency.  It is done digitally.  Digital currencies include cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies, central bank digital currencies and e-Cash.  You've probably heard of bit coin for example.

And you know about the scammers that do their own form of illegal digital treasure hunting by mining the digital information that resides on our computers.

FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday warned Americans that the Chinese government’s theft of American information is taking place on so large a scale, suspected incidents make up nearly half of his bureau’s counterintelligence cases.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington, Wray said that Chinese thefts amount to “one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history,” and that the American people are the victims...

See https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-director-wray-says-half-of-bureaus-5000-counterintelligence-cases-are-related-to-china

Yesterday I mentioned some of the products of our culture. If you thought China might be a place you could escape from our culture, the Chinese have been going to great lengths to become wealthy by stealing our Culture.  Can you believe they even have a Shanghai Disneyland Park?

Now that Crossfire Hurricane is over maybe the intelligence agencies can spend there time on more useful things.

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One great book that I think you'll enjoy is Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.  It goes into the invention or evolution of the things around us and how we live today.   It is really an very exceptional book on the history of most everything we encounter in our homes and lifestyles.

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Source: nhc.noaa.gov

There is a 60% chance that the system up by North Carolina will develop into a cyclone in the next 48 hours.  It is expected to continue to the northeast though. 

Most days now there is something developing somewhere.  I think we are supposed to get 20 some names storms this year.  It was upgraded some the last time I saw the forecast.

Looks like the page view counter will hit 2.5 million later today.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/7/20 Report - Putting It Together: Waves, Liquefaction and Lenses. Kings Landing.

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

Clark Little Photo of Wave.
Source: ClarkLittlePhotography.com.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but they say a lot of things - don't they.  In this case, it might not be too far off.

They also say appearances are deceiving.  It looks to me like there might be a bit of a fisheye effect in this photo, but it is still amazing and informative.  Even if there is a fisheye effect, and I'm not sure there is, it still seems to show the sand being picked up with the water.  The surface of the sand right in front of the wave seems to curve up into it.

I've posted other pictures showing something similar, but there is also a lot of geology science that talks about things like liquefaction of sand and soil and how that happens, so we have both the pictures and scientific principles, which seem to support each other.

Source: Pinterest.

Liquefaction can be created by vibrations, which it seems you'd have on a beach with all of the breaking waves, but if that were not enough, I showed an illustration about a week ago that illustrates how passing waves cause liquefaction and water lenses.  I also have referred to how dock piers are set by a pressure hose pushing sand and earth apart so the pier can be inserted.  Putting that altogether, it looks like liquefaction could be one big ingredient that hasn't been talked about much in the metal detecting community to explain how sand and objects move on a beach.  In the past, it seemed that people just talked like sand and objects were simply pushed around somehow.  If you put this all together, I think you'll have a lot more understanding of how sand and other objects can move on the beach.  You'll also want to add what I've called trigger points.

A lot of times things are simply uncovered or washed down from the dunes, but I think the best metal detecting days are when the waves crash from the low tide zone and work their way all the way up until they crash against the dunes.  We usually can't see through the turbulent water to see how everything is moving, but the above photo might give you a pretty good idea.

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Find With Good Message.

I mentioned finding a cheap necklace not long ago.  It bears a good message.  It seems like every time out I've been finding some type of little turtle thingy.


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Exclusive Kings Landing Development Coming to Fort Pierce.

King's Landing, a new exclusive community is planned for marina area of Fort Pierce. 

Homeownership ranges from the mid-$400,000s to $1 million+. 

Charleston homes are two-story, three-bedroom and 3 1/2 bath residences.

Homeownership begins in the high $500,000s.

I've read that they are all reserved in advance.

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If I decided that the predominant culture in which I now live has evil roots and is pervasively evil and I should no longer support it and participate in it or what came from it, that would mean I'd no longer use the internet or computers, or the English language for that matter.  I'd have to burn my degrees and erase them from my vita.   And I'd have throw away antibiotics and other pharmaceutical products, to to China or someplace for medical care, give up hot dogs, Coca Cola, eye glasses, laser surgery, TV, airplane travel, air conditioning, Ford, Chevy and Tesla automobiles, the convenience of the water closet, my Wrangler jeans, and UF Gator shorts.  I'd even have to stop rooting for my football team, watching the NFL and basketball.  And that is just a beginning.

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Not much on the National Hurricane Center map today.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net