Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of the Treasure Beaches Report.
Just wanted to send these along, this is along the ~2.5 miles between these two beaches today.
Found two modern quarters and 5 pieces of junk.
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| Frederick Douglass Area Beaches Saturday. Photos by Gil Y. |
Great photos Gil. Thanks.
Notice the footprints showing mushy sand.
I've been thinking about the days immediatelhy following Ian. Sometimes you can learn a little something from doing that. Even when you don't come up with any striking revelations, maybe you can add a little to your understanding.
We just saw a really good example of how the Treasure Coast beaches can erode when the wind and surf is coming from a southerly direction. I saw erosion that ran for miles south along the beach south of the Fort Pierce. inlet. I also saw photos of a lot of erosion to the north of the inlet and up in the Vero/Sebastian area. Most of the Treasure Coast showed some erosion from the strong south winds and surf from Ian.
On Wednesday the wind was blowing south to north almost parallel to the beaches, and you could see the waves hitting the beach from a sharp angle. We talk more about Nor'easters, and with good reason, yet is very apparent that a good south blow can cause some pretty good erosion too. We've seen that many times before, but this was a very good recent example.
I believe that there are significant differences between erosion caused by a nor'easter and a south blow. Despite the deep and lengthy cuts we saw the past few of days, we didn't get the same kind of erosion on South Hutchinson Island (not to mention the tons of sand that accumulated during teh summer and previous years) that we've seen by some nor-easters and the renourishment sand on the Vero/Sebastian area was a factor there, so we didn't get a pure test up there. I'm convinced the renourishment sand will usually wash away quicker than beaches that build naturally. I won't get into the reasons for that now, but the beach profile isn't the same. And that is too bad for the turtles that lay their eggs in the renourishment sand. Turtle eggs were all over the beaches.
It seems to me that "sou'easters" (the term itself does not seem as natural) have a slightly different effect. Perhaps it has something to do with the natural south to north path of tropical storms and/or the prevailing contrary longshore drift. Nonetheless, south winds and swells can certainly cause a lot of beach erosion, and we just saw a good example of that.
I can remember many days of being on the beach when a strong north wind was blowing sand that stung the face or any exposed skin. It was doing that Wednesday. By Thursday, the beach wind wasn't as strong. Wednesday, you could see the sand blowing along the beach front like drifting snow. After such a long quiet summer, it was a welcome change.
There were a lot of detectorists on the beach Thursday. I don't remember if I saw any Wednesday. I don't think I did.
As I might have mentioned, there seemed to be a lot of younger detectorists Thursday at John Brooks and Frederick Douglass. I don't know if that is a trend or not. A good number of them looked like beginners. Some were very obviously beginners, and a good number of them were using Equinox detectors.
There were a good number of coins in the ground Thursday despite the number of detectorists covering the areas around the well-known wreck beaches of South Hutchinson Island. I had no trouble finding coins. In fact, the modern coins were aggravating me. Not only were they plentiful, but they were mostly deep. I almost started passing on penny signals.
At one beach I was getting into some of the older peanut butter color sand and some older layers of shells that held large pieces of aluminum. Digging through old compact shell layers with a sand scoop can be difficult and time consuming. I only hit a few near-surface coins freshly exposed by erosion.
Hard to believe that pulltabs were replaced by the staytabs in the 1980s, so if you were digging pulltabs you might be in layers that are forty or more years old. And the "new" zinc pennies have been made for forty years now. How time flies. I dug some deep and obviously well-seasoned zinc pennies from packed deeper layers.
With all of the detectorists that have been covering the beaches in recent years, I did't expect to find so so much metal still in the ground, but I'd guess there has been a lot of discrimination going on
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov. |
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| Source: MagicSeaWeed.com |
That one system seems to be following a path similar to Ian, but probably will change.