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| South of Fort Pierce Jetty Near High Tide Saturday Morning Source: SurfGuru.com. |
We are still having the King tides, which in the photo above, has the water still hitting the base of the dunes.
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As I said a few days ago, I recently noticed that YouTubers were talking about things we talked about in this blog ten or twenty years ago. I already mentioned one or two of those. and I'll address another today. One Youtuber seemed impressed by the performance of a new metal detector when he found a few targets in a field that he had covered many times before with other detectors. He attributed the finds to the remarkable capabilities of the new metal detector. It is reasonable to feel good about a metal detector that makes finds in areas that have been detected before, but there is something that must be realized.
One of the most important posts (actually it was a series of posts) I ever published in this blog was about how many targets remain in the ground even after the site has been metal detected many times and finds are diminishing. I'm talking about the posts about the tests conducted by Russ P., who after metal detecting the same site several times along with other detectorists who detected the same site, then bull-dozed and sifted the entire lot and found that there were still many coins remaining in the ground. When that ground was sifted, hundreds of coins were found even after all the metal detecting. Here is the link for the post that summarized the findings of that study.
As far as I'm concerned, that post is a MUST READ for any detectorist. I've never seen another study that involves sifting an entire lot after it has been heavily detected. It is the only study I know that shows how much can be missed by metal detecting. Normally, detectorists never know how much they missed.
It must be acknowledged that that ground was not the typical piece of ground. It held an unusual amount of silver coins. But the important part is that it shows how much can be missed. And it was not a large piece of ground, so you might expect good coverage. To summarize the results, the detector finds were less than one third of all the finds made by sifting. There were hundreds of silver coins remaining in the ground.
It should therefore not be at all surprising when continued metal detecting continues to produce some coins when a new detector is used. I'll maintain that using the same detector might produce results if new settings or techniques and the same detector are used. That is the basis for my Progressive Step-Search technique. Using another detector is just another step that could also be expected to produce a few additional results.
One problem we have as detectorists is that we typically never find out what we didn't get. You only see your hits (or finds). You never find out what you missed. It is something like taking tests in school and only finding out how many you got right but never finding out about the ones you got wrong.
In metal detecting, you learn a lot when you learn what you missed. My metal detecting changed a lot when I found out that I was missing small gold rings when I used a certain level of discrimination. After changing to using mostly all-metals mode, which I did for many years, my productivity changed dramatically. You can go around forever feeling good about the great find you made without ever learning the painful truth of the ones that got away.
How can you tell what is left behind? Unless you do something like Russ did and sift it all, you won't get such a full accounting, but you can check and double check some of the things you do by systematically making changes and trying different things.
Maybe there are times when you did get it all, but I wouldn't bet on it when there is any size to the area or when the area has accumulated many targets over time.
First, detectorists seldom cover an area as well as they think they did. I've proved that to myself many times. I've talked about such things as imperfect sweep patterns, discrimination of various forms, target masking and more.
Most modern metal detectors provide an endless variety of settings and typically detectorists only select one setting for each hunt. Modern detectors make automatic adjustments. That in itself can cause missing targets. A metal detector can lose depth while working to adjust. Tradeoffs are involved when metal detectors attempt to filter out noise, adjust to mineralization or avoid junk.
Also, site conditions change over time due to geological forces, weather and sources of ambient noise. Coins and other objects change position in the ground as a result of geological factors, weather and animals.
In short, there are many reasons that coins can be missed on any particular outing. The operator changes too. The operator changes behaviorally, physiologically and psychologically during and between hunts. Focus attention change as the operator becomes tired or discouraged. All of that can affect decisions, coverage and results.
The bottom line is that it is easy overestimate your effectiveness and underestimate what remains. By taking all that into consideration, you should be able to make better decisions.
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Discrimination is a similar matter. Again you don't know what you miss, but you can check yourself once in a while, which is something I recommend. In fact, my recommendation would be to start on a site without discriminating, and after finding out what kind of stuff you are dealing with, then deciding what your strategy will be and what settings you will choose.
If you will really want to know what your metal detector is telling you, there is no substitute for actually digging the signals and holding the object in your hand. That is the best way to check and know with certainty. Actually, you don't always know what you have when you hold it and look at it. It sometimes takes years of research, so why would you expect your detector to be able to tell you all you need to know about possibly valuable or complex objects. Most detectorists will never spend the time to really conduct studies to do a real analysis of the benefit or loss of their decisions, and that is certainly ok if detecting is just a hobby and you just do it for the fun of it. You might be happier not knowing what you missed.
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Here is a academic study that discovered that AI agents under certain conditions will be deceptive or just straight out lie.
Moloch's Bargain: Emergent Misalignment When LLMs Compete for Audiences
Again, while AI can be useful, there can be significant risks that you should know about.
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov. |
Jerry is still out there, but the pattern this year has kept the storms far out to sea.
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| Source: nhc.noaa.gov. |
The Treasure Coast surf is still up around four or five feet, and the surf has a little more angle to it this morning. We had a bit of a front come through, and the weather is not as hot as it has been all summer long. I like the cooler weather, and I heard we won't be getting so much rain. I think the beach weather will be nice.
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I received some questions conerning coin movement and plan to address that sometime soon.
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Good hunting,
Treasureguide@comcast.net
