Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
Dip On Treasure Coast Beach Yesterday.This is the same beach I showed a few days ago (9/98/11 Report) when it was really cut. Very little of the cut remains. In fact, none of the original cut.
This beach is a little deceiving though. It looks like it has not eroded at all since the time when it was cut. The way it looks, you might think that it filled in since then, but that is not what happened.
This beach, at the spot shown in the photo above is actually back towards the dunes fifty yards or more. There just is no steep cliff. There is a lot of erosion though.
I showed an illustration of a beach not too long ago (9/26/11 Report), and there were a lot of different layers and points shown on that diagram. I was trying to show that to know a beach, you have to know how high it is a different distances from the water or dunes.
A beach can be eroded and not look like it, because not all erosion results in a steep cliff or cut.
In the photo above, just above center and a little to the left, you can see a dip - actually two dips. You can also see how the first dip slopes steeply up the slope towards a small cut. That would be a good place to check. In this case, the slope was mushy and it wasn't much good.
Again, remember this dip is far west of where the front beach was a few days ago. You have to know that beach and what it was like before or you wouldn't likely realize what happened there. That is part of really learning to read a beach. You have to know the depth of sand at different points at different times before you can really understand how the sand is moving.
Photo Showing Area Just North of the Dip Above.What do you see? You see where the sand went. You see a sand bar and a dip in between the bar and the beach. Look at the left side of the photo. The waves are breaking on the bar,and then immediately to the right of that is a small dip. What happened is that the sand that was the front beach a few days ago, is now in the water.
The following photo shows the same beach, just a little further north than the other two photos.
Notice the sea oats at the top of the slope. If you knew how far the berm was from the sea oats before, you would now know how far back the beach moved.
Also notice the recently exposed roots. That tells you that this erosion moved sand that hadn't moved since those roots grew.
It is always a good sign to see newly exposed roots. That tells you that sand that has been stable for a while has recently been moved. It is a good idea to check areas like that where objects that have been buried for a while could have been washed out.
That was just a little additional information about learning how to read a beach.
I got to spend some time on the beach yesterday. Even though conditions have deteriorated since Monday there are still enough targets out there to make it interesting.
There was some shipwreck stuff such as spikes to be found at some spots even though the beach was heavily detected over the past few days. There is always more. I was finding deep objects and some that were simply missed. And the water was coming up high enough to freshen some spots.
Good finds are often made a number of days after you would think that everything has disappeared.
I am reducing my Treasure Coast Treasure Beach Detecting Conditions Rating back down to 1 though. That doesn't mean there are no artifacts left to be discovered, and there still might be a few more cobs to pop up.
Speaking of cobs, I received a photo of the other side of Dean C's eight-reale and a couple of smaller cobs that he found in the Jupiter area.
Bathtub Beach was the most eroded beach on the Treasure Coast it would seem. By Sunday afternoon, most of it was gone again. You might remember that it was renourished very recently. They'll soon spend another 23 thousand dollar to dump and on it again real soon, so you might want to take a look before they do that.
The wind is from the south again and the swells down around three feet for the next couple of days. The waves, though were nicely formed for surging yesterday at some locations. Expect shell piles at some locations. It is always good to look through the shell piles.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
