Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
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| Copper Sheathing After Wood Wreck Has Disappeared. Source: Cover of the NOAA study referenced below. |
I need to alert you to an important meeting this Friday. Below is a flyer with details that I received by email from Wes B.
Note the time and place given in the last paragraph: Friday April 25 at 5 PM at FIT in Melborne.
If you want to know what could happen with wreck salvage under Federal law you might want to attend.
As background, here is a link to an overview study funded by NOAA entitled Underwater Cultural Heritage Law Study, 2014-005.
http://www.data.boem.gov/PI/PDFImages/ESPIS/5/5341.pdf
You might want to browse this for multiple reasons. First, it gives a good overview of the relevant law, explaining, for example, the Black Swan case that resulted in Odyssey Marine returning salvaged materials from the Mercedes to Spain. You might be surprised by how much is covered by this body of law and how far reaching it can be.
If you don't know why global warming is so important to some in politics, take a careful look at this study. In this study you will see links to references explaining how oil companies and other private energy related companies first discovered three 19th Century shipwrecks and then funded government archaeological investigations of those shipwrecks (See photo below). Issues such as pollution and global warming provide much regulatory and financial leverage for government activities and touch almost everything you do from flushing your toilet to the batteries you use to power your detector.
Maybe you thought NOAA was all about weather.
You might not feel like reading the entire study, but at least browse through it.
You might want to take a look at the section on Common Law of Finds. The concept of "abandonment" seems to be overlooked, as I would define it. When is something "abandoned," and when does a ship cease to exist? It would seem to me that a pile of unidentifiable or barely identifiable wreckage is no longer a ship. Definitions are important. They can be used and abused.
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| The Ewing Bank Wreck Photomosaic by Dan Warren, C&C Technologies. |
Here is something that isn't quite as heavy. See if you can guess what the following is? It is something I picked up on a walk the other day. I'll give you the answer tomorrow. There is one pretty obvious answer, but that isn't it.
Discrimination or discrimination?
When metal detecting, there is more than one way to discriminate. You can let the detector do it for you by using a discrimination knob to completely eliminate a complete range of less desirable signals, or use a fancier form of discrimination, such as notch discrimination, or use sophisticated graphic digital output.
Another way to discriminate is to use all-metals or pin-point mode and let your brain do the processing. If you learn to hear what your detector is telling you, you don't need to discriminate out signals altogether or read a graphic display. You can learn to interpret approximate size, general shape, depth, and metallic composition by listening to a simple auditory signal. That takes a little time and training, but can be just as or even more effective. Of course, some detectors provide more information in the auditory signal than others, but you don't need anything very fancy to get a lot of information from the auditory signal. What it takes is time and practice.
I will continue with this some other time.
Treasure Coast beach detecting conditions remain poor. The surf on Wednesday will be only about three feet and then decrease more for a couple of days.
Happyhunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
