Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
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| Bottles On Display At The St. Lucie County Regional History Center Photo by JamminJack. |
Above is one of the photos of bottles on display at the St. Lucie County History Center. The museum is on the north side of the South Causeway just on the other side of the bridge from Fort Pierce. You might want to stop and look around some time.
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| Area Where Glass, Bottles and Other Litter Surfaced. |
There are many similarities between metal detecting for coins and looking for old surface bottles. Bottles, like coins and other things, can be found in clusters. Some places you can find many of them, and other places they are very scarce. Some places they are deeply covered and some places they can be found on the surface.
Near the top right corner in the above photo, you can see roots of a dead pine tree sticking out about a foot above the surface of the sand. That told me that the area was being eroded days before the bottles appeared. You should pay attention to those types of clues when metal detecting or bottle hunting.
The principles of nature remain the same, so you pay attention to signs of erosion no matter if you are coin shooting or bottle hunting. Sand is moved and covers and uncovers objects in the same way. The density of the materials and shape of the objects are very important factors that help determine when and where things will show up.
For items from shipwrecks and old bottles, there is a deposition event, and then there is scattering. When lost in the water or on the front of a beach, much of the scattering is caused by the movement of water, That scattering continues to some extent as long as the items are exposed to the movement of water. The scattering can move items in one direction and then another over and over again. And the sand will move in one direction and then back, covering and uncovering items over and over again.
In the above photo you see a scatter of litter that suddenly appeared and remained for a few days and then disappeared again.
Although the principles are the same, the items are different. Glass is less dense, and bottles tend to have a lot of large flatish surfaces and hollow spaces. Some bottles will be filled with sand or water and that will have an effect too.
It was not easy to make a good illustration, and I'm not very happy with this one, but I hope it will help.
The red dots indicate bottles and the big red oval indicates an area of glass and bottles. Some are buried and some exposed. That will often be the case. Although you will not see all the good bottles, you will have a good idea of where the buried ones will be found. Again, this is very much like coins. Don't miss the similarities.
In the photo above you can see a lot of litter along with the glass. There is a lot of broken glass and some bottles on the surface, but there are more buried bottles. Buried surface bottles are in front of the beach in the low tide area as well as on top of and under the sand above the water line. The big red oval that indicates the center of the bottle hole is partly buried and partly above the sand. The amount that is exposed will be changed if you come back at another time.
Knowing that you only see part of the cluster, you can probe and see where the buried glass and bottles are,. You can also rake the area to find bottles that are not visible.
Many of the older bottles are more rectangular than round, and will lay so that the flat upper surface is very near the surface of the sand. They are not easy to see and can be covered by a thin layer of sand.
Many bottles will be only partly exposed. You will need a keen eye to spot a neck or bottom barely sticking out of the sand. With practice you can learn to tell by the position of the piece if it is a part of a whole bottle or just a piece.
There will be times when the water is higher, and there will be times when there is poor visibility. That won't prevent you from raking bottles and glass up onto the sand.
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| Raking Glass At The Water's Edge |
Since you will probably only be able to see part of a bottle scatter, you will rake beyond the scatter that you can see. Push the rake into the sand and pull the glass and bottles up onto the sand. If there are any waves at all, the moving water will wash the pile you raked and you will see if anything interesting appears. If there is no moving water, you might have to spread the pile out yourself.
Be sure to pull the rake back through the front of the lip of sand at the water's edge. There will often be a lot of bottles and glass under the front lip of the beach. If they are farther back, they will be too deep to rake.
When pulling the rake, listen for the sound of the rake on glass. You can tell when you go over larger pieces that you might want to be sure to get. Go back over the same area trying to get deeper.
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| Raked Cluster. |
Push the rake down as you pull it in so you get a down a few inches into the sand. And to repeat, if there is lip at the edge of the water make sure to pull the rake back through that area, which will often have a good concentration of bottles.
I tried to make a video of this process, but the day I took my wife with me to make the video, the scatter wasn't there. As a result I'll just have to use my photos and illustration.
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| Raking Glass. |
In the photo immediately above, just above the rake handle you can see one pile that was previously raked up. The water was muddy that day, so you can't see much of what is in the water. On days like that you can use a rake to usee what is hiding under the water.
I've also tried shoveling in areas like this but found raking more effective.
That is a little-known technique you probably never saw anywhere else.
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Doesn't it seem strange that the people who think the culture is evil and want to cancel it complain that they didn't get a bigger piece of it and want more of it.
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Looks like next weekend we'll get a bigger surf. Something like 3 - 4 feet.
Happy hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net