Hit the Beach for 2 hours but nothing !

[devan]

Hi,

Hit the beach today for almost 2 hours and found very LITTLE of anything
about $0.60 in change, 2 modern playground tokens and a 1c coin from 1976

I'm I missing something, doing something wrong

The beach I was at has been used from the early 1900's and is about .80 miles long and about .20 miles wide,
I first concentrated on the dry sand where the most people tend to sit and relax, then I went to the water's edge in the wet
sand, sensitivity had to be turned down to about half, but worked like a dream in the sand ( just no finds )

Any advise on using my MD at the beach will be appreciated, many thanks for reading

Devan

 

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[SirJoey]

Ur lucky. I wish there was a beach around here.
Especially being a novice, it would help me greatly.











"The Lord is my shepherd"

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Devan, I'll address the part of your question that is for 1) the old coins, and 2) the wet sand:

First of all, you have to realize, that on ocean beaches, the sand is not "constant". So even though the beach usage may go back ~100 yrs, trust me: That sand you see (even the high and dry sand way up by the dunes) is not the same way it was 10 yrs. ago, or even last year perhaps. The dry sand dunes are constantly being reformed by the wind (1 grain at a time, multipled by years and years .... moves whole dune shapes over time). And the mid-and low-belt areas of the beach have no doubt been re-arranged by past storms, which erode, then rebuild, etc .... The wet sand zone is always changing, with each swell, tides, etc.... What you see now as inconceivably way back from the water's edge, might have ...... 7 or 10 yrs. ago, been eroded out by certain storms. Then the subsequent spring (or the next storm or whatever) brings sand back in. Thus, sand is always "moving".

That's why you do not find coins from 100 yrs. ago, or even 10 yrs. ago. I bet that coins from as recently as 10 yrs. ago, might already be 2 foot deep up in the high and dry sand, for instance. And if the sand is "coming in" (verses eroding out), then you might actually find acres and acres of the wet-zone of the beach that is TOTALLY sterile (devoid of targets), no matter HOW many tourists are there (barring something lost just yesterday or whatever).

Yes, this does not speak to the issue of modern coins, from just this season, lost up in the dry sand. There should always be random drops that haven't sunk out of reach, if you have enough tourists and picnickers. But for the old coins, and the wet beach, there's a lot of science that goes into that.

The way to find the old coins, and/or targets on the wet, is to show up when the sand is on the way out. When mother nature is stripping sand off, like during certain direction swells, with on-shore winds, combined with the right high tides, can take sand out. You will see the tell-tale signs: 1)Steep slopes that weren't there previously, 2) "cuts" where the sand takes an odd drop-off (like a mini-cliff at perpendicular angles to the surf), 3) "scallops", which are an inverted bowl shapes, where the sand went out in a scouring fashion, or 4) simply the whole wet sand zone of the beach is lower than the week or day before, with no discernable benchmarks to measure off of or compare to, since the whole zone is lower (you can usually tell though, because the wet zone reaches higher up to the dry sand than previously, and the sand is hard to the step, rather than mushy/soft).

When any of these various erosions signs are going on, mother nature will group targets as if the entire beach were a riffle board or sluice-box. When it's going on good enough, the old coins will come into view, in addition to decades of modern losses all put into nice little zones no more than an inch deep, and as fast as you can dig.

Only experience will be your teacher though here, but hopefully, this is a start for ya

 

[devan]

Hi Tom,

Thank you for the info, it will be most useful to me when I go down to the beach again

Only problem is that I go to the beach only once a month, I stay about 30 miles from the nearest beach, so
taking note of the changes will be diffcult, but I will always take my MD with me, you never know when the
conditions will be right to MD the beach 8)

Definitely much more to detecting beaches than I though