Treasure coast beach report

[billinstuart]

Went from Stuart to Sebastian yesterday. Southern beaches were nasty with seaweed, not much change in beach profiles. As we progressed north, the seaweed lessened and the beach profiles looked better. Rio Mar looked pretty good. Chucks (Bonsteel) exhibited some erosion and NO seaweed. In all cases, though, the material at the surf line appeared to still be that crap they "renourished" the beach with. Most of this probably washed off the upper portions of the beach. As such, it is unlikely anything OLD is there.

The silt in the high energy surf zone is the tell..most were really cloudy from all the "fines" in suspension in the water column.

No, I didn't detect anywhere, although I had my detector with me. I did make my annual pilgrimage to the Mel Fisher museum, though.

 

[GuerillaBill]

I spent last week camped at Sebastian Inlet, across from the Mclarty Treasure museum.

The beaches north and south of Sebastian inlet were clear of any seaweed or debris, and beaches south of the inlet had about a 10 to 12 foot cut.

Several of the beaches were closed due to construction of new facilities, but some were still open (treasure shores, golden sands, turtle trail, and Vero public beaches were open).

I detected at these beaches, and had luck at turtle trails, where I found some artifacts and helped another person recover one gold reale.

All the beaches were sanded in with about 2 feet of sand, so if your detector didn't have at least 18 inch depth, you weren't going to find anything.

I was using a excalibur II and found several items, but no gold.

On Thursday, a man and wife from nevada found a gold reale using a Fisher Gold Bug 2.

I helped them dig it, and we think there may have been another one it the hole, but we couldn't get it out due to the tide coming back in on us.

The problem with the treasure beaches is they are mostly flat, and when the tide comes in, it comes in fast.

All our finds were at the low tide line, which meant we only had about 30 minutes of good target and digging time before the waves refilled our holes with sand.

As the above poster said, the most popular tourist beaches have been renourished and the good stuff is probably way down.

The smaller, no name beaches north of Vero seem to be were the best things are being recovered.

One other point - if you are camping in the area, the no-see-ums are pretty hungry this time of year.

Bill

 

[tedpank]

Got to agree,

Spent an hour or so at the Treasure Shores Beach Park and only interesting find was a surveyors pole stake buried in the sand. Had FRS (top line) TRV PT (second line) on an orange cap connected to what looked like a rebar post.

Heard that 6 to 8 silver reales were found on this beach last week. All in a clump!

As said in the original post, lots of seaweed, not cuts!

 

[Cr4zyH0rs3]

Its all about being at the right place & time.

 

[DaChief]

I made my first trip to the area, (non planned), yesterday morning. I visited family in Titusville to watch the Shuttle Launch and happened to have my detector so I headed out Sunday morning to the Treasure Coast and gave it a shot. Got there at about 0630 and it was freezing cold for that area (49) on my vehicle thermometer with a stiff wind blowing. I stopped at Treasure Shores Park and walked it for about an hour. I found some modern coins and the top to a treasure period bottle. There was lots of shell type debris up on the beach so I was pretty optimistic that I may find something. My problem was that low tide was going to be late in the afternoon and I could not stay. I knew hunting at high tide would make a find of any importance probably a moot point for me.

All in all, I may have hunted for two to three hours. I did the tour at McCarty Museum and that was very nice. Two very nice older ladies were there to give you a personal tour.

Here is my take on the Treasure Coast after my first visit.

The Rangers and the Life Guards in the area are so accustomed to seeing people with detectors, that they don't even give you a second look. I thought that I would be scrutinized and reminded a hundred times of the rules but they were all very nice and everything was buisness as usual.

There were some cuts from the surf but it was obvious that you would have to hit the beach at low tide to have much of a chance to come away with anything.

There were many many people there with every type of detector imaginable. I used my Sovereign most of the time with the WOT 15 inch coil and I was hitting some deep targets but again I was there at high tide and no treasure made it into my bag.

***One note was that the folks at McCarty told me that they are not interested at all in keeping anything that you find. They do like to photograph it if you will bring it in but they don't record your name unless you want them to and they do not want any part of your beach find. A lady found a large emerald recently behind the museum (65 carats) and she took it home with no issues. I was of the impression that anything over 50 years old fell into the Florida State Antiquity Law. The Rangers there said they weren't interested. Go figure.

Pics of the beach in the area and the last one is the Shuttle Launch at night with the moon in the Background.

DaChief!