6/12/19 Report - South Hutchinson Island Beaches. Salvage Activity. Mystery Item. Old Fig Syrup Bottle.

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

John Brooks Beach This Morning.

I went out to the beach this morning.  It looked like a summer beach.  Sand is accumulating and the water was near flat.  Very nice, but hot.

Most beaches looked the same.  I didn't bother to photograph Frederick Douglass.

South of Blind Creek.

South of Blind Creek it looked like someone had been blowing holes near shore (above) so I took this photo.  Just a short while later a small boat with a mailbox showed up and parked north of the Power Plant.

I did a little beach metal detecting and was surprised by the number of modern coins found.   That was the first time I'd done any detecting for a while.

I also picked up a few of those tent stakes.  I'm glad to have them because I use them to stake Christmas decorations.  I'm always glad to get something useful at the beach.

Fort Pierce South Jetty Beach.

Fort Pierce South Jetty Park This Morning.

There were a lot of new turtle nests.

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Changing channels I ran across one of the Curse TV programs last night - Curse of Civil War Gold.  I managed to watch it for a few minutes before they started with the same old stuff - making random bits of rusty junk out to be kin to the Holy Grail and putting very dubious dates on items.
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Joe R. said, I picked up $100 in rolled quarters today and found four with the "W" mint mark.

Neat!

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Old Iron Mystery Object.

 I posted this one some time back and got some answers, but am not sure yet, so put it out there for any additional opinions.

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Cracked California Fig Syrup Company Bottle.

If you find any old bottles with small cracks, it seems sitting around in the Florida heat can make the cracks grow.  That happened to his bottle.

The California Fig Co. opened at Reno, Nevada, in 1878, selling its only product, Syrup of Figs.  The firm had a rocky beginning, reorganizing twice before it achieved success with the final 1897 corporation.  The Sterling Remedy Co. purchased the California Fig Co. in 1912, and it remains in business to the present.  California Fig packaged its products in a total of six different embossed bottles as well as at least one variation used in England.  In addition, the different incarnations of the firm used generic bottles with paper labels both before and after the adoption of the embossed containers – an apparently common phenomenon in remedies successful enough to remain popular from the 1870s to the 20th century...

The above bottle appears to me to be post-1917.

Here is a link for more about that.

https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/CaliforniaFigSyrup.pdf

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

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