5/22/14 - How To Track Gold On The Front Beach, Google Street View Beaches and Naples Florida Canals

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

Sample Google Street View Image Showing Beach at Rio Mar With Navigation Icons.

Memorial Day is coming up and people will be hitting the beaches.  In fact, there have been good numbers at some of our Treasure Coast beaches lately, but if you want to visit a new beach or two and want to get a preview of what it looks like before you make the drive, you can take a look at it by using Google Maps Street View.  That will give you a 3-D view of the beach and will allow you to use the navigation tools to look and move in all directions to get a good idea about what is there, including facilities, lay of the land, parking, etc.

Bill M. wrote and brought this to my attention.  He said,  Google just activated street view for every inch of beach in Florida.

This means you can now get a step by step view of any stretch of Florida beach.

For example, if you wanted to see what the beach in front of RioMar country club looked like, you can go to Google Maps, pull up Vero, zoom into RioMar, click the street view icon, and drag it onto the blue line at the beach.

It will show this: https://www.google.com/maps/@27.639677,-80.351071,3a,75y,95.47h,90t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1scMeTCBCW-NPR5EgiQow2kw!2e0!3e5?hl=en-US

Then you can use your mouse to rotate, zoom, or move up and down the beach.

This isn't a real time view, but it is useful when doing research - especially for those out of the way or secluded beaches that may be difficult to reach.

Thanks Bill!

It is important to remember that Google Maps  is not a real-time view.  That means that you can not get an up-to-date idea about beach conditions, but you can get an good overall view.

I was talking about rut busters the other day, and this is a tool that can help you get an idea about some new beaches you might try. 


Here are some very up to date views of Treasure Coast beaches.

I visited three different beaches just yesterday around low tide.

The surf at this beach was down around two feet and the beach had filled more since my last photos.

I didn't bother to detect at this beach. It just didn't look worth it. 

There were a few shells here, and small sea glass.

Below is another beach a few miles away.   That is a more busy beach.

You can see the flat area below the slope.   I detected this beach briefly to give it a test.

There were a modern coins running for quite a distance near the bottom of the slope.  Not a huge amount of coins, but enough to keep it interesting. 

The modern coins here were a few inches deep. The signals weren't real loud and could easily be missed if you were moving too fast.

The first target I picked up was a fractional zinc penny.  It was so corroded only about half of it remained.  It obviously wasn't a recent drop.  Although totally worthless as a find, it was a quick indicator that helped me determine where I would continue the hunt.  By evaluating where it was found I got an idea of which direction to go to find better targets. 

Always try to determine if a find is part of a pattern.  If it is not a recent drop and is in the wet sand, it probably is. 

If it is a light target, such as a zinc penny, move up or down the slope slightly (most often down) as you proceed along the beach to see if you get into heavier or lighter targets.  (I've discussed the zig zaz pattern in the past.)

Make a mental map of where you are finding lighter and heavier targets, noting particularly the transition zones, both East and West and North and South.  Of course, moving from light to heavy target areas and continually evaluate and redefine the different areas according to what you find.

The next find was a green encrusted dime.  I was moving in the right direction.  Then a few more mixed coins.   I then know I'm in the zone and continuing to get a better idea of how things are distributed in the area.  Following the trail and moving towards where I would guess from an evaluation of the scatter pattern the heavier items are located, confirmation comes as a small gold ring pops up.

After checking for a possible cluster and not finding evidence of one, I moved on.

I showed the following beach a few times in the last few days.  It is the one that had some nice cuts that have been disappearing and which have now almost totally disappeared. 

I didn't bother detecting this treasure beach.

Overall, I'd say beach detecting conditions are poor for the treasure beaches, but some of the busier tourist and swimming beaches will produce a few coins and jewelry.  A little patience will pay off.


Naples Florida was the site of a network of canals dating back to around 1000 AD.

Here is the link to that story.

 

http://news.wgcu.org/post/tests-suggest-age-prehistoric-naples-canal

 

 

 On the Treasure Coast the surf will be decreasing down to around one foot.  We'll have a nearly flat ocean for a week or so if the surfing web sites are correct.  I'd try water or wet sand hunting at the swimming beaches.

 

Happy hunting,

TreasureGuide@comcast.net