Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Some Beach Wheaties.The readers of this blog came through once again. Two days ago I showed a photo of some ceramic items, including a tube. Rich of New York says the tube was used to insulate wiring for the old bare wire electrical systems. When a wire ran through a stud or something like that, the ceramic tube provided the insulation for the wire. Finally I know what those things are. Thanks Rich.
A Revolutionary War US gunboat, possibly the USS Scorpion, is being excavated.
Here is the link to that story.
http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=4175
I recently mentioned complaints about open holes and dug junk being left on our beaches. Be careful who you blame. I heard from one fellow that said he was returning from a distant spot where he was detecting, and as he approached a part of the beach nearer the beach access, he saw some holes someone else had dug up ahead, and another detectorist yelled out telling him to fill his holes. He hadn't detected in that area and wasn't even up to the holes yet.
Just because you see a detectorist and have also seen some holes, don't jump to conclusions too fast. The other guy might not be any more to blame than you.
If you work the wet sand, you probably realize that the water will sometimes fill your holes for you - and sometimes so quickly that you are unable to retrieve the object.
If you are working far away from the beach accesses and the crowds, and the water is getting up to your holes, I see no problem in letting the water refill your holes, but if you are working where there are a lot of people, you still need to fill them.
Take a big heavy bag or container along with you in addition to your goody bag. Not only can you use it for larger finds, but you can also carry out the trash. I really don't understand why anyone would want to detect the same trash over and over again.
Using discrimination leaves a lot of trash that could be removed too. When I find a trashy beach, I know it hasn't been detected well. No discrimination or target ID system is perfect, and trash can mask or hide a lot of good targets until it is removed.
If you use discrimination, you might not dig trash, but you leave it the same as the guy that digs it and leaves it.
Different parts of the beach are very different when it comes to detecting. For general purposes of discussion I often consider the following zones: the dunes, the dry beach, the splash zone, the slope, the wet sand, and shallow water. Some of those zones overlap.
There are different theories about how barrier islands are formed. It seems no one knows for sure how they actually formed. Some theories refer to glacial melt.
If you want to read a little more about the predominant theories, here is a link.
http://www.csc.noaa.gov/beachnourishment/html/geo/barrier.htm
I'm not so much concerned with how the barriers islands formed. My interest is in how they behave, and especially how that affects metal detecting conditions.
I divide the beaches into two types based upon the dune area. Some beaches have a steep cliff at the back of the beach, sometimes several feet high, such as the beach in front of the nuclear power plant on South Hutchinson Island, or the beach at Wabasso, and Corrigans.
Beaches change. Rio Mar for example, maybe 15 or 20 years ago, had a five or six foot cliff in front of the beach club. Now it has a more gradual slop all the way back partly as the result of the renourishment projects. Old US coins, like V nickels used to fall out of the cliff in front of the beach club when the water eroded the cliff.
Anyhow, those beaches with a relatively high cliff cut into the dunes can make for good detecting whenever the cliff erodes, especially if the cliff cuts into sand that has not been disturbed for decades or centuries.
Most of the steep cliffs have been caused at least in part by man. At Wabasso you have the sea wall to the north and all of the other stuff that prevents a more natural beach from forming and causing a cliff there most of the time.
Down at the power plant, the steep cliff is cut into sand that was dumped there when the power plant was constructed.
Similarly, a month or so ago there was an eight foot cliff in the beach renourishment sand immediately south of the Fort Pierce inlet.
You can't just dump sand on a beach and expect it to stay. The fact that it eroded in the first place tells you that the natural forces will continue to move that sand.
Beaches like Corrigans have relatively high dunes behind them that undoubtedly contain decades or even centuries of accumulated old materials. I've personally seen items hundreds of years old fall out of dunes like that when the water gets far enough back to erode the old undisturbed sand. Now there is a bunch of renourishment sand in front of the old dunes there and many of the other places.
Steep cliffs on the face of the back dunes can erode by things other than the waves hitting them. Rain and wind can also erode those cliffs, even if that process is not as quick.
Any time the cliffs erode into the old sand, regardless of the cause, old things can fall out.
Sometimes you'll see slabs of the dune face fall. Old items will sometimes fall out with those slabs.
The big cliff down at the power plant is artificial, as I mentioned. The natural height and shape of those dunes would be more like what you see down at the Walton Rocks beach access or north at the Blind Creek accesses. But since the sand behind the cliff at the power plant was dumped there during construction, there is no layering according to age. Old things are both above and below modern things there.
If you dig down six or more feet in front of that cliff, you'll find a layer of peat where the old marsh was.
On other beaches where the back beach is relatively flat, such as Green Turtle Beach, you have those rounded smaller dunes. Those dunes are created by wind and migrate relatively rapidly. The wind blows the sand back where it fills the low marsh area. Gradually the beach moves towards the west.
Those small migrating dunes do not contain layers of old accumulated items. Yet the back beach, if you go down far enough very well might. The hurricanes of 2004 cut that beach down several feet all the way back to the walkover, and old items were found there.
I'm not saying there aren't old items on the back beach there - just not in the migrating dunes.
I don't know where that beach was back in the 18th century. I don't know how far east the front of the beach was back then, and I don't know how far west the back beach went.
It takes a lot more erosion to wash old items out of the back beach on a beach like Green Turtle Beach than on a beach that has a steep cliff at the back.
Over the past couple of decades it seems to me that the beach on South Hutchinson Island from the condos south a few hundred yards through the Nieves site, the sand has been accumulating in front of the beach and building the beach further to the east. I believe that is at least in part due to all of the beach renourishment projects that dumped sand to the north of there. If I'm correct, much of that sand has migrated south significantly making the beaches down there much wider.
I can remember when the beach just south of the condos was eroded back near the current tree line. Now there is a few hundred yards of sand in front of that. Several other land marks that were near the water line have disappeared there as well over the past twenty years. There were tree stumps and other things near the water line that are now deeply buried and far back from the water line.
I guess my main point is to be aware of the two different types of beaches. One will produce old shipwreck items from the dunes much more often than the other. You should also be aware of where the sand is old and undisturbed as opposed to newly accumulated, whether it is the result of natural forces or man...
Sorry for the rambling, but I think you get what I'm trying to say.
Treasure Coast Beach Forecast and Conditions.
Katia is gone. Maria, it seems, will stay pretty far to the east of us.
The wind is out of the south and the swells hitting almost directly from the east.
Seas will be two feet or less for the next few days. That means no improvement or change in conditions for a while.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
