1/10/18 Report - The Future Starts Now. Great Article On How Sand Moves. A Few Finds.

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

Finds and photo by Steve in Sebastian

I received the following email Saturday along with the above photo from Steve.

Found these items yesterday near the power plant. Coins are modern, items on top appear to be copper or brass. Don’t know yet what large chunk in lower right is, need to investigate.


Steve.


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In my January 5 post, I included a great email from Steve about "another kind of treasure." He thought about the past and the immediate aftermath of the wrecking of the 1715 Fleet.

We know a bit about the past, so when we imagine what it must have been like for those involved, we have some history and facts to start with.  If, on the other hand, we think about the future, it seems more open-ended and more difficult.  I have a hard time imagining what it might be like three hundred years from now, but I decided to think about that a little anyhow.

If we start with current trends, it might be reasonable to expect increased development of our coastline.  With that there might be more restricted beach access.  Certainly there will be no place that you will be able to hunt in the dunes, as you could do in the not too distant past.  I'd also expect the beaches to become more unnatural.  Beach renourishment has already become a yearly thing for some beaches.  Man shapes the beaches more and more and the beaches become less natural.

The sea is rising.  The study I will refer to in more detail below talked about a rise of at least one foot per hundred years.

It seems the beaches are becoming more junky.  You see a lot of plastic and other garbage on the beach that will not deteriorate in a thousand years.  I'd expect that trend to continue.

There are a lot of questions.  Will the archaeological or homeowner communities control more and perhaps make detecting on the beaches illegal?  You might not know this but one of the homeowner groups already took legal action against salvage efforts taking place in front of their community.

Metal detectors will undoubtedly improve, but how and where will you be able to use them?

Robot metal detectors?  Years ago I thought about how I could use a remote control vehicle to carry a coil.  One big problem would be marking a hit.  I thought about using spray paint.   You get the idea.  Lots of engineering problems to solve.  Not that difficult though.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a new type of artificial sand or additive that will be used to replace or prevent the natural sand from being washed away.

Just some wild guesses.  

The future starts now.  Maybe you can help shape it in some way.

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I found a great article describing the changes that occur to a barrier island system - both short term and long term.

Here are a few excerpts.

Barrier beaches and spits are constantly raised up, shifted, and torn down by the natural ebb and flow of waves, currents, winds, and tides. Storms can reshape them abruptly and dramatically. Hooks form, inlets open and close, and beaches slowly march across their back bays and lagoons toward the mainland, as if seeking shelter from the full force of the ocean. This process allows them to naturally march upwards as sea levels rise.

On the southeastern elbow of Cape Cod, where the New England coast reaches out into the cold and choppy North Atlantic, this natural progression has been taking place in full view of satellites for more than 30 years. The images above were collected by three generations of Landsat instruments: the Thematic Mapper on Landsat 5, the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus on Landsat 7, and the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8. Each scene shows the shape of the coast off of Chatham, Massachusetts, from June 12, 1984, through September 11, 2017. (Click on the dots to scroll through the images, or hit the play arrow for a slideshow.)

The entire article is worth reading. It will help you understand the flow of sand and there fore where to find the areas where things are likely to be uncovered. This article is a must-read for any serious beach or shallow water hunter.

Here is another excerpt from the same article.

The changes to the Nauset-Monomoy barrier system are sometimes subtle and sometimes dramatic. In 1984, when the image series begins, an unbroken barrier spit shields the Atlantic-facing coast of Chatham and its harbor. South of the mainland, North and South Monomoy Islands stand apart from each other and from the coast. Over the span of 30 years and 15 images, three major breaches open in the system and the barrier islands connect to the coastline and to each other at various times. All the while, sandbars and shoals—which appear as light tan waters just offshore—hint at the underwater movement of sand up and down the coast.

The first major change appears in September 1987. A nor’easter in January 1987 cut a new inlet through North Beach, forming what the locals called South Beach Island. In the 1990 image, the north end of South Beach Island nearly connects to the mainland; by 1993, the connection is complete and the south end of the spit starts to grow longer and wider. For most of the 1990s and early 2000s, South Beach keeps reaching southward toward South Monomoy. Meanwhile, the waters around North Monomoy grow shallower as sandbars and shoals rise up toward the water line.

Here is the link.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/cape_cod.php



One thing they found was a major cycle that repeated about every 150 years.  There are both long-term ad short-term beach cycles.  Short term and long term cycles can interact.  I can't get into all of that now.

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On the Treasure Coast we'll have a couple days of three to five foot surf.  The tides are moderate.  The wind isn't favorable.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/21/17 Report - Hurricane Season and Seasonal Beach Changes. Intuition and Data.

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

Beach detecting conditions haven't been much good for a long time.  I can't even remember the last itime I issued a beach detecting conditions rating of three of more.  It has been a while.   I'm pretty sure that it has been more than a year, and maybe two or more since I issued a "4" rating.  This summer has been VERY slow if you are talking about fining old shipwreck items on the beach.  We've had a very small surf for months now.

We all know about Nor'easters.  I've talked about how they hit the beach and provide access to old items.  Lately we've had mostly southeast winds that bring hot weather and a small beach-building surf.  Things will change - sometime.

We are now well into hurricane season and everybody is waiting for a beach ripping storm.  Some seem to think that the early formation of storms like Don might indicate an active hurricane season.   I just read one such article.

"We’ve now had two tropical storms form in the tropical Atlantic before Aug. 1, Bret and Don," said meteorologist Bob Henson of Weather Underground. "This early season low-latitude activity is likely a harbinger of a more active than usual Atlantic hurricane season..."

Here is the link for more about that.

http://blog.spiritdaily.com/news-links/early-storms-a-harbinger

You might find this older article helpful.  It gives some general basics you might want to review.  Here are a couple paragraphs from that article.

Now, let your imagination return you to that same beach in winter. Your beloved berm is gone, pulled out to sea by regular storms. If it is a particularly vicious winter, the waves might have chipped the dune face into a scarp. This is seasonal erosion, and not usually a big deal, because summer comes along, the storms abate, and wind patterns restore the berm. And so it's not so much erosion as it is a seasonal fluctuation, in which hurricanes play their own role. "Hurricane passage with high waves and surges will cause dune erosion, but a lot is temporary," says Rogers.

Not always. Big storms like Matthew can pull sand into deep water. So deep, that the normal waves and tides that come after the hurricane won't be strong enough to drag the stuff back up onto the beach. But, because shore erosion is a long game, scientists won't know where (or whether) Matthew hastened long term erosion. More obvious are the effects on low shorelines, where Matthew could push sand inland, past the beach, into coastal shrubbery, marshlands, or communities...

Here is the link if you want to read more of that one.

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/hurricane-matthew-aint-helping-floridas-beach-erosion/

The best way to increase your number and quality of finds is to increase the amount of time you spend hunting.  There are other ways.  Skill is important factor, but you still have to be out.  When you are out there a lot, you have a better chance of finding the better spots and running into one of those spots when it is producing, even when they are few and far between.

A lot of people blame their detector when they aren't finding much.  That can be a problem, but it usually isn't the problem - assuming that it is working fairly well and you know how to use it to some extent.

There are times when some beaches simply aren't producing.  When that happens you might be better off trying something else.  Don't get stuck in habits that limit you.  You might need to travel a little farther or try a new different type of hunting.  It is too easy to get in the habit of hunting the same spots all the time.  It is best to have a good variety of spots that you know very well.  And continue to explore new spots.

Some spots will produce on and off over a number of years and then quit.  I keep those cataloged in my mind and wait for them to start producing again.  Some of those spots are seasonal, but some haven't produced for a few years.

Some detectorists switch from hunting old shipwreck items to hunting modern items when conditions are poor.  Those two types of hunting can be very different.  You can find a lot of modern items in the dry sand, but when you hunt the dry sand you are mostly looking for items that have been recently dropped, so you are looking for areas where a lot of people have recently congregated and been involved in the types of activities that result in losing items.  When it comes to hunting in the water for new items, that is more similar to hunting old shipwreck items.  It is more about how the sand is moving.

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I recently did a poll on intuition that showed that most treasure hunters rely on intuition to some extent.  Intuition is viewed by some as the natural result of observation and experience culminating in good judgment, for others it is viewed as something coming from a more magical or mystical source - something more like ESP.

If you are one of the few that feels that intuition is not reasonable or incompatible with a scientific approach, here are a few quotes form Albert Einstein.

The only really valuable thing is intuition. I believe in intuition and inspiration; at times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.  There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

When you look out over a beach, there is order.  The wind, waves and gravity all work in harmony, distributing things according to their ways.  From experience you might grasp the prevailing order at first glance.

One more quote on intuition I want to add.  This one from John Naisbitt, author of books on the future and megatrends.

Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data.

Some might think that data replaces or pushes aside the need for intuition, but in this view, vast amounts of data makes intuition all the more valuable.

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There are no storms brewing in the Atlantic or Gulf right now.

The surf is still small but the tides are big.  We are having some nice high and low tides.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

9/3/16 Report - New Disturbance On Its Way. How One Beach Changed Last Week. Tracking Treasure. Fisher Action.

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

Source: nola.com

Hermine is gone, but all the action isn't over.  There is another disturbance approaching.  You can see it on the above chart.

Expect a small surf through the weekend.  Monday and Tuesday the surf is expected to be a bit bigger.

Even when you don't have a storm or anything rough, beaches change.  Below I'll show you what happened on one beach over the past week.  It is a good lesson.

Beach Illustration.

In my 8/27 post I showed the above illustration.  The illustration shows a beach that I hunted and where the coins and jewelry were.  That beach had a cut (shown in brown) and a distribution of coins (in the orange area), including a jewelry hole.  As I explained, this beach is a beach where mostly cheap items are found.  What I wanted to show is how finds get distributed on a beach.  It is not a random process, especially when the items have been lost a while and they have been sifted and sorted by the water.

I went back to the same beach yesterday.  That was about one week later.  As you know, we have been having mostly south winds and relatively small surf and decent tides.

Here is how the beach and target distribution had changed.

Same Beach As It Appeared Yesterday At Low Tide.

Last week the cut (light brown crescent) was about a foot high at the peak and tapered.  Yesterday the cut was not nearly as high (only about a half foot at the most) but it ran much farther (darker brown line).  Other than how that cut changed, there wasn't too much that was obvious.

The jewelry was found at a different location this time. Last week the jewelry was found at the blue circle.  Yesterday jewelry was found in the area of the blue rectangle. It was lower on the beach and was spread out along the wet sand in a narrow strip between the dry sand and water line.

It took me about fifteen minutes, at most, to find the new jewelry location and to find the items shown below.

Cheap Jewelry Found At One Beach Yesterday.

There were almost no coins found with the jewelry.  Just one penny and two bottle tops.

Although I wouldn't spend much time on a beach like this that produces almost exclusively cheap stuff, I wanted to illustrate how beaches change and how you can benefit by identifying and tracking different target areas.  Again, I didn't need discrimination because when I was in either the area where the jewelry was or the area where the coins were located, and there was almost no junk in either of those locations, and I also wanted to know where the junk was.  The junk can help you to define beach areas, and it can help to tell you where to spend your time or where to not spend your time.

The orange outlined area that contained coins last week, did not now produce any coins.  The coins were now farther south, just beyond the area shown in the illustration.  It was fairly compact or dense hole.  There was one unidentifiable piece of junk in the coin hole.  Again, no need for discrimination.

Besides that hole, which often appears on this beach, there is often another spot where concentrations of coins are found, but the second spot was not producing yesterday.

I wouldn't spend much time on a beach like this, but I did it primarily to illustrate how beaches change and how the distribution of targets on a beach will change.

Until you get to know a particular beach, you might have to do a few hunts just to become familiar with the beach.

Knowing where things were found last week helped me to find the productive area yesterday.  

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Down in the Keys, the Fisher boats were back in port, however before having to come in they made some good finds, including a few silver coins and an adze.  I discussed some tools from the Treasure Coast not too long ago.  A 4 inch square stone that appears to be onyx is a more curious find.  There was another similar one found on the Atocha site about thirty years ago.

The crew of the Dare has been exploring EM hits.  One was a bomb strap.  Another target that appears to be non-ferrous was missed after digging a large hole.  They'll return to recover that one.

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Keep watching the latest disturbance.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

10/20/15 Report - Morning Beaches and Finds. Piece of Gold Chain and Copper Connector. Also More on Fork Handle and Charles IIII Coin.

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

Piece of Gold Chain Found This Morning on a Treasure Beach

Copper Connector Found This Morning Close To The Chain.

There are a couple of finds.  There were more found yesterday and today.

Above Turtle Trail Looking South This Morning.

Most of the beaches didn't change much since yesterday.

North of The Bend North of Seagrape Trail

John Brooks beach had a lot of sea weed on it this morning.  That is a sign of a beach that is accumulating sand rather than eroding.

There were things to be dug at all the beaches that I visited.  Most were not shipwreck related, but there were some that were.

I'd say that Turtle Trail South was the place to be today.

The weather won't change much the next two or three days and I'm not expecting the beaches to change much.  I don't think any real good new holes will open up but I would expect some left-overs to be found.   I think some spots will improve a bit while others deteriorate.  Conditions are still better than they were a week or so ago.

I'm sticking with my "two" beach conditions rating for another day.

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In my 10/18/15 post I asked for any information I could get on two items that I posted.  John P had information on both.

Concerning the coin that I thought was a Ferdinand, John P. gave this correction.  Here is what John said.

Hi, it looks to be a Charles 1111 by the design of the head, and I can just make out 1800 date. It also has the FM mint mark which puts it between 1791 and 1801...

He also knew about the fork handle, saying,  As for the fork handle, I have taken many of these apart for the sterling handles and they can have a putty in them or some even lead. That one has a very common design. It may be a pewter handle as you mentioned, but I only have scraped the sterling handles. They were made for many years and mostly in the 1800's through current times.

Thanks much John

Ivor Hume, in his book A Guide To Artifacts of Colonial America, said "Silver and silver-plated handles of the first half of the eighteenth century were made in two cast sections joined down the middle, in the second half the entire handle was often machine stamped in very thin silver and filled with plaster composition which gave it weight but little durability."

The one I showed was joined down the middle.  I think you can see that in the photos I posted.

It came from a 1715 Fleet beach.

Hume's book can be a help in identifying the date of some artifacts.

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Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net