4/27/14 Report - Shipwrecks in Gaveston Bay Being Explored, Gold Ring Found on Treasure Coast & More

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



Shipwreck Site in Galveston Bay
Source KHOU.com video mentioned below. 

Yesterday I talked about speedy recovery of targets in dry sand.  One thing that I didn't emphasize enough is the necessity of a strong heavy scoop with a sturdy handle.  The scoop should be heavy enough to provide momentum and speed when swung, otherwise the technique will be more tiring.




If you looked at the pfd file presenting a  summary of laws related to underwater cultural heritage that I posed a couple of days ago, you could not have missed the heavy presence of BOEM and NOAA.  It looks to me like those two groups could be taking over the field of deep water shipwreck salvage and archaeology.  Their names are showing up more and more when shipwrecks are discovered.  I really wonder if there will be anything that isn't controlled and operated by the government in the future.  Will there be any room left or any reason left for "private" enterprise?  Will anything and everything "private" be demonized as evil, greedy, or selfish?  It is beginning to look that way to me.

Here are two links to web sites presenting discoveries of historic shipwrecks in the Gulf of Mexico.

http://www.khou.com/news/local/No-way-Clock-found-in-shipwreck-debris-off-Galveston-255722941.html

Take a look at the video as well as the text. 

http://archaeology.org/issues/124-1403/features/1811-gulf-of-mexico-monterrey-shipwreck

Here are a couple of paragraphs from this one.

We were a little bit hesitant at first,” says Irion of opening the video feed to the public. For example, if valuable artifacts are found on a wreck site, they might attract looters or salvagers to the area. Or, if an archaeologist makes a premature assessment, a large audience may be there to witness the mistake. One of the artifacts archaeologists were most excited about, for example, was a piece of cloth identified as “the wool jacket.” It tuned out to be a modern T-shirt that snagged on the wreck.

Archaeology is a challenging pursuit under the best circumstances, and even more so when conducted through thousands of feet of water and via a sophisticated, but sometimes very clumsy, ROV. “This is like parallel parking a truck underwater,” commented one of the engineers controlling Herc. “While you’re not sober,” chimed in another. Something as simple as closing the latch on a box of artifacts could take an hour. “Archaeology is sometimes a destructive process,” Irion adds. Previously untouched sites are dismantled in the course of studying them, as artifacts are removed, moved, and occasionally broken. “Sometimes things happen that you don’t want everybody to see.”

As I've said before there is the too prevalent view that the citizen is good for providing tax dollars to fund projects but beyond being a milk cow is not trusted, even when the project is a mile under water.  Where did the concept of public servant go?

Public funded projects should be open to public view and should not be hidden from the public even if someone wants to avoid the embarrassment of a mistake.  An interested and involved public will provide assistance and insure quality.  Simply put, cultural heritage belongs to the public.

Did you also notice the discovery of these wrecks was credited to the government organizations rather than the companies that actually located and reported them?




Another 14K Class Ring
Dug on the Treasure Coast

If you spend much time detecting you'll find a good number of class rings.  Most of the men's class rings are relatively large and therefore easy enough to find.

If you are only finding big gold rings and few ladies or small rings, you are probably using too much discrimination.

One of the larger gold class rings that I ever found was in a small area out of which I dug three or four one ounce sinkers before hitting the ring.  I could have easily quit after digging the first sinkers.

Not only are class rings usually fairly large, but they also often contain all the information you need to find the owner and return the ring.  It shouldn't take too much research.



This was a busy weekend for those of you who attended the meeting at FIT and the Treasure Hunter's Cookout.


Well, it really is starting to seem like summer.  Not only do we have wind from the South and sandy beaches, but now the temperature is climbing.

The high tides are nice and high today, but probably won't do much good because the sea is nearly flat.  I'm not expecting much change any time soon.

Get used to the poor beach detecting conditions.




This is the general type of fish that produced the skeleton that I showed the other day.


Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net