Too Much Sand

[bigscoop]

Did a 6 hour run today at New Smyrna Beach, took the Excal & WOT and hunted a lot of sand from the low tide to high tide waterlines. Ran the Excal with the sensitivity cranked way up and the disc set at 3, dug only those targets that offered repeat signals, no matter how faint. Dug a total of 47 targets and nearly all of them were around 10 inches deep. I think Irene added more sand instead of taking some away.

 

[Lorrain.]

I experienced the same thing today at the beach...saw no cuts, and just mild erosion; lots of sand landed in the ocean.

Lorraine

 

[steve from ohio]

Florida was not really affected all that much by Irene. Farther up the coast in North Carolina is where the weather had an effect.

Lots of flooding and power lines down. The storm on the OBX could bring some opportunities on the beaches in the near future. But as everyone knows, the sand will be back and probably already is being brought up on the beaches.

 

[bigscoop]

I experienced the same thing today at the beach...saw no cuts, and just mild erosion; lots of sand landed in the ocean.

Lorraine

Yep. Everything looked pretty flat & level, all filled in, was even hard finding some good rippled sand.

 

[S.S.Tupperware]

Same beach, same results.... this last weekend, Daytona wasn't much better.

 

[captaindoug]

I worked New Smyrna on Sunday, with my shark and ended up with under a dollar in clad and one old hoop. Not even much trash.

 

[Can Slaw]

I am currently in Myrtle Beach until Labor Day. Irene pulled all of the dry sand down to the water, plus brought in more sand. Some of the worst conditions I have seen in a long time. No cuts, no troughs, just sand bar after sand bar.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Judging from the barnacles exposed on poles at Daytona Beach it took about a foot off the beach, there are nulls now when there hasn't been any or very few in a long time.....We were digging greenie coins again, but the beach still needs at least another 12 inches plus taken off..... I found total of 1 silver wedding band and a silver St C. metal, both tarnished bad, more junk jewelry and about $7.50 in clad, most of it was quarters

 

[Diver_Down]

On Vilano (north of the St. Augustine inlet), there was quite a bit of erosion the morning after. The next day ... the sand returned. I wish I would have planted a stake to quantify the new sand. The day after the storm, the first tier before the tidal zone was gone. Now, the tier returned. I would guest-timate that it was about 3 ft. deep. The good thing is that the surf zone is pushing the excess sand up on the tidal zone exposing the goodies in the surf.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Regarding what diver_down says, that there is post-arrangement going on:

I dunno about the east coast, but here on the west coast, we sometimes have seemingly right-condition storms that "over power" the beach. Instead of hitting at a particular point, and making a vertical cut (which we'd all like to see), what it does instead is to go "up and over" into the dunes, making a wet lagoon mess up high, bringing down dry sand with modern trash in it, etc....

But when this happens here on the CA coast, we've learned that sometimes the trick is to return a few days later (especially when high and low tides continue to be quite contrasted, and preferably when surf continues to be slightly rough). What sometimes happens is mother nature re-adjusts, in the days (or a week or two later) following those events. Because she must re-slope her angles, thus robbing sand from one place, and putting it in another, to re-adjust. So sometimes the actual good hunting follows a few days later, upstream or downstream of certain points, where low spots are in the midst of being filled in.

Are any of you guys on the east coast "checking back" to see if such anomolies are occuring?

 

[bigscoop]

Tom,
At New Smyrna we got just enough wave action to push a little more sand onto the beach, for the most part it didn't even reach the upper dunes. Since then the surf conditions have been pretty mild. Didn't even find any signs of the outer bars being disturbed too much (no trash or debris to speak of). Like Treasure Hunter said, did find a few "greenies" but all the ones I found were pretty deep. Looks like it moved some stuff around and then laid a gradual layer of about a foot of new sand over the beach as the wave action receded.

But the good news, I did find a few areas along the beach that had a hard pack of crushed shell about a foot down. Gonna keep an eye on those areas in the future.

 

[Diver_Down]

Vilano's profile:


###Dry/Parking###\
\
\
------Tier 1 | Towel Line ---\
\ < - High Tide Line
\ < - Wet Tidal Zone
\ < - Low Tide Line
XXXXX-Rough Surf -XXX- Trough-XXX - Outer Sand Bar

As I mentioned above, Tier 1 had eroded completely to form a gradual slope to the surf. The profile above might seem like an exaggeration, but it really is what I call a short beach from parking to surf with a pronounced drop in elevation from each tier. Yesterday, Tier 1 had returned to reform a terrace that is easily 3' deep. The sand is moving from the "Trough" back up the slope.

 

[bigscoop]

Took about a week, but started seeing a few cuts and some tidal pools starting to develope yesterday. Spent some time in the trenches yesterday at low tide and started finding more targets. Things should be looking pretty good for a while after the weekend holiday traffic.

 

[FLauthor]

Oh, how I wanted to head to New Symrna Beach following Irene storm. I called a source there that told me that people were allowed on the beach. But I was laid up with carpal tunnel surgery to my detecting hand. But back in 2004, following Hurricane Francis, i found a honey hole on New Symrna Beach that produced some of those pictured. Total amounted to 150 coins, all silver except for Buffalo nickles and one V nickle. I felt like Kip Wagner must have felt when he discovered his silver deposit.
I badly wanted to hunt but I couldn't. I directed a couple of my hunting partners to the site but they hunted Amelia Island instead. There will be another time and another beach eroding storm and maybe I'll add to my booty.