Friday, September 6, 2019

9/6/19 Report (Part 2) - Indian River County Beach Accesses. More On Cuts.


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

Yesterday I posted a list of beach accesses that were closed in Indian River County as of 8 to 9 AM.  It seems some might have been opened later.  It appears that there was a precautionary swimming advisory due to bacteria in the water, which might have been one reason for some of the beach closings.  As you'll see below, one person was told that beach closures might be due to damage to the beach access(es).  I don't know which, if either of those, or if both were responsible for the closures, but it seems that some of those beach accesses, if not all, will be open on Saturday.

The most recent email I received concerning the Indian River County beach closings is from DJ.  It  follows.


I received this text an hour ago: "S: Indian River County beaches have been tested and determined to be satisfactory for swimming.


The Florida Department of Health in Indian River County is lifting the county wide precautionary swimming advisory that was posted on September 4, 2019 for all public beaches.”


If some beaches were closed because of bacteria, I suspect thoe will be open tomorrow.

Before DJ's email I received the following email from Jerry P.

Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate your daily blog reports. Especially in times of big wave and sand movement. Your 5th picture on 9/4 was actually me. I had just hit the beach at John Brooks heading north for a short ways before turning south. I went about a mile south working upper and lower wet-sand areas. Even gridding a few spots from the water line up to the dunes that looked promising. Only found a few clad and lots of can slaw.

 

On the way home to WPB I made a recon of most of the accesses north all the way to Melbourne for the next day’s trip. I saw the same thing you saw today in Vero Beach. ALL the beach accesses were gated, and Turtle Trail as well as Sea-Grape had Vero Officers in Black SUVs stationed in front of the gates. Makes no sense to me to waste that amount of manpower guarding beach accesses when the conditions were not dangerous at all. And this was around 2:30 pm on Wednesday!

 

Yesterday 9/5, I did notice that Golden Sands gate was open, but all others all the way to Amber-Sands were locked. No cops this time though. Today they were saying that the water quality was not fit for swimming in Indian River County. That may be the reasoning for gating them. But seams to me there must be other motives with Officers stationed at the gates again, since we can’t go it the water anyway😎

And before that I received this message from Joe D.

  I just got off the phone with parks dept of IRC! They said only beaches open were Golden Sands, Wabasso, Round islsnd, and Tracking Station! 


    I was told that the others had  possible access damage! I told her that detectorist were not concerned about that, and that we just wanted the parking to access the beaches! She said she would check again!  


   I would suggest flooding them with phone calls to speed up the process and let them know that we are watching and waiting!!



(772) 567-8000 main number! Ask for Parks Dept. They will transfer; or get direct number!! 




What I found at 8 or 8:30 AM Friday does not match entirely with the beach accesses being either open or closed later, so it sounds as if some beaches were opened after I was there.

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Not all cuts are the same - not even if they are the same size.  It is very important what the erosion cuts into.  If it cuts into old sand, that is good.  However if it cuts into new sand, it generally isn't worth much.

The cuts I showed  in the last couple of days were just eroded dunes that had been created in recent years.  Nothing old is going to be in those dunes, and nothing old is going to get washed out of them.  People were finding modern coins and aluminum below those cuts.

You can have a big cliff cut into the dunes.  That still won't yield much of anything old IF the cliff is in new sand, such as beach renourishment sand.

Some people saw some big cuts in renourishment sand that was dumped on the beach just a year or two ago and got excited.  Nothing old is likely to come out of sand like that unless something old was in the sand when  it was dumped there.

One other exception would be if the cliff was big enough and things washed up and got dumped in front of the cliff.  That would not be too likely at most of our beaches now.  When that happens, you'll probably have some good solid packed sand in front of the cliff.  That is not what we have at most of our beaches now.

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I wanted to get what I learned about beach accesses posted earlier enough for you to take it into account for the weekend.  Therefore I'm posting this part of my 9/6 post early.

I might have more to add to it later.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net