Beach Study???????

[Skull diver]

As I wrote yesterday, due to a lot of combinations, it is almost impossible to calculate a repetition pattern of any spot with success.

Today's occasion explains exactly the hard reality against theory...

Today I've been just lucky to go back again in a spot where I already searched with a dive friend multiple times.

Scarce finds even with good ground months ago, not today...In spite of a bad beach appearance, with wood, plastic and thick seaweeds, once I was on the seabed the signals started to entertain me much more than usual and some surprising finds appeared.

So this is just to say, You'll never know until You don't check with your eyes and possibly with your feets the ground...I'd say... Especially with your feets.

Good luck!

 

[Hunterjunk]

Many great points made by previous posters . I note it's mostly about wave action though . My beaches are in a large bay that is only exposed to serious wave action in weather from the East or North . Strangely the sand can move in or out in these events with often the opposite result to what I expect . Each is enclosed by rocky points and all the beaches are subject to a constant West to East littoral drift year in and out . I think ocean currents set up in the bay combined with wind events , when in the right combination make for the big events . The last monster one here happened in 2015 , when for a couple of weeks 150- 300 plus coin counts per day were the norm. Still waiting for the next one ! Currents can scour the beach without any weather event . Two years ago here a large scour hole developed on one beach at the low tide line . The weather had been calm for weeks ?  Much rock was exposed where nobody knew there was rock . Rings in silver and gold along with a good haul of Pre Decimal coins resulted . The area inexplicably disappeared a month later and has not reappeared . 

Constant monitoring of your beaches pays , and as Skull Diver mentioned , there's information coming from your feet . Feeling that patch of really hard sand means you better get that coil down .

[mn90403]

On 12/18/2024 at 6:44 PM, King-Of-Bling said:

10 years go by and that ring was found. 2 days later his weight was found. I believe this was not a coincidence

Do you think they were deep or far out over those years?  They were not in range of the detectors (too big of an assumption) but they were not found until then.  Why both at a similar time?  (Just a guess will do!)

[King-Of-Bling]

1 hour ago, mn90403 said:

Do you think they were deep or far out over those years?  They were not in range of the detectors (too big of an assumption) but they were not found until then.  Why both at a similar time?  (Just a guess will do!)

Both , out far and deep. Water constantly churns , ebbs and flows. Targets getting  buried under rocks and who knows how many layers or feet of sand. Eventually that washing machine effect of storms/winds/tides all align and bring them up to be found. There is no other explanation. That's how a beach replenishes itself of targets that are decades or even centuries old. Look at the old coins and jewelry that occasionally come up in pockets under the right conditions here in So.Cal...Or even the 1715 treasure fleet off the Florida coast. Same thing. Local knowledge and history play an important role. More recently , I was on a beach that I grew up on in the late 60s. I've seen some crazy stuff there before. We'll this time I found some pier/dock pilings that I've never seen before. Local historians/city leaders have no documentation or pictures of this either. So it is still a mystery , buried under feet of sand.

[TTT2866]

On 12/18/2024 at 1:43 PM, Joe Beechnut OBN said:

 

My opinion

Every beach is totally different, conditions VARY, sand matrix, intensity variables, directions, the list is endless in the possibles that affect beaches.. 

Years ago there was a guy on Findmall who had a few hundred lead rings he made, wedding band size, think they were around 5 grams? Took them out and seeded different areas of a beach. He could never really see a defined pattern. I'll see if I can find that post, it was around 2010? 

For me here in the Chesapeake Bay, as slow as things move here I've found there is no sure fire way of knowing what I'm walking into or when to expect great conditions. I can come close on a few details from learning the habits when some conditions come in, then watching for patterns but l've yet to be right to the point I can predict 100%.

Good Luck!

Found the story.. interesting too ....2008

   https://www.findmall.com/threads/has-anybody-tried-planting-surf-salt.116381/

Hello all,

I hunt the wet sand between the water line and the dry sand primarily, so the following experiment really only applies to wet sand hunting.

About ten years ago I made a little mold to cast lead rings. I made the mold to cast rings that I considered to be of "average" size, weight and shape. Then I threw about 200 of them out in the surf all across one beach I hunt pretty heavy which is Seal Beach in S. Ca. In the month following that "planting" I found about four of those rings in the wet sand which meant they had been swept up there by wave action or whatever. Since that first month, I have never found another one of those lead rings.

This last summer I tried the same experiment but since I couldn't find my mold, I cut up a 3/4" copper tubing water pipe into "rings" of varying widths from about 1/16" to 1/4". I'm a machinist by trade so this was fairly easy for me to do. Again I threw about 200 of these new copper "rings' out into the surf all across the beach at a distance from shore where most people swim. I have only found one of those copper rings since that "planting."

The fact that I have found so very few of my planted rings surprises me. I have probably found close to hundred rings on that beach of varying degrees of shape, worth and weight since that first planting ten years ago...and I have probably found a dozen rings on that beach since my planting this last summer.

What conclusions can I draw from this experiment?

What I think is...there is more stuff out there than we can imagine but only a very tiny percentage of it is within detector range at any given time.

Has anybody ever tried this experiment before? What results did you get?

Harvdog

That's a great thread, I've always thought about doing the same thing but numbering the rings and tracking them. Eg, pin where it was placed, then another pin where it was found.

[mn90403]

The results on your beach would give you more information about it.  

It may or may not be applicable to another beach.  😉