 |
|
 |
|
|
|
Welcome to Minelabowners.com
|
| THE
DUMMIES GUIDE TO THE BEACH OR HOW TO BECOME A BEACH WIZARD. By ALAN HASSELL COPYRIGHT 2/3/1998 Most people getting involved in Shallow Water Metal Detecting, or simply detecting on the beach might have a mere smattering of knowledge about how nature is constantly changing the beaches we search. The average person, visiting a beach is totally oblivious to the forces of nature at work, which affect the beach and change it's appearance day by day, week by week and month to month. Anyone visiting any beach only notices and absorb the things they know about. Like the sea has waves rolling in upto the sand, and physical structures such as piers, boardwalks, beach-huts and the kiosk. With this knowledge, they hope to use their metal detector and find heaps and heaps of gold rings and other trinkets. The only difference between successful treasure hunter's and newbies, is the fact the professional took the time and effort to learn as much about the environment he works in, in order to gain a better grasp of the situation at hand. There will all ways be the individual who thinks he knows it all but does not know a thing. Many years ago a film called, Tom Jones, had Albert Finney saying, "It is better not to be educated and know something, than to be educated and know nothing." Having a detector is one thing, be it used on the dry or wet sands or in the water. knowing something about Coastal Geomorphology can make the difference between being successful at what your doing or being just the average guy out for a day's enjoyment, detecting on the beach. Geomorphology is basically the study of Coastal evolution and Coastal change. Yes, it does have a name and for many years, courses on the subject have been held at the Australian National University, Universities of London, Sydney and Melbourne. It might even be part of certain courses and studies in University's in the USA. In writing this article, I am attempting to give you the reader a better understanding of the beach, in order that you can use this knowledge to your advantage. Hopefully, having a better understanding of your surroundings and environment, you might even put this knowledge to better use and increase your yield of finds. Some of this material, might appear to be boring and elementary, however, in order to get a better comprehension of what I am attempting to explain, it is convenient to define terms describing coastal features. The foreshore is the area between the water's edge which is exposed at low tide and covered at high tide. The shoreline is strictly the water's edge. The back shore is the area extending above normal high tide mark and can be inundated by large high tides or large waves during storms. This area is usually referred by the layman as the beach or dry sands. Sounds confusing, it did to me at first too. Looking seaward, a short distance from the shore is an area called the near-shore zone. This area includes area's where waves begin to break, the surf zone, with broken waves, and the swash zone, which is covered as waves run up the foreshore. Beyond the near-shore zone is an area referred to as the offshore zone, which is also referred to as the long-shore and onshore zones. The terms offshore and on-shore are used to describe direction flows of wind, water and sediment. The beach, is the area covered with loose sand, gravel and boulders or shingle, confined to the back-shore and often extending across the foreshore as well. A bank of beach material that lies offshore, exposed at high tide is referred to as a barrier. If it is exposed at high tide, and exposed at low tide then it is known as a bar, sometimes referred to as a sandbar. Wind is the climatic factor which affects the coastal evolution, building sand dunes, generating waves and currents, that combined together influence and sculpture the sea-floor topography. Tides, waves and currents interact to produce and energy input which shapes and modifies the shore. It is an ongoing process in which things are changing constantly. Tides are caused by gravitational pull of the sun and moon in relation to the earth. Other factor's involving tides are the earth's rotation and gravitational forces of the sun and moon. The rise and fall of tides are usually measured at ports. Tides recorded shortly after new moon and full moon when sun, moon and earth are aligned are referred to as spring tides. Maximum spring tides occur usually during the equinox (usually on the 22 March and 22 September), when the sun is overhead at the equator. Neap tides occur when the sun and moon are at right angles in relation to the earth. Their gravitational effects are not combined, consequently reduced tidal ranges occur and are known as neap tides. Atmospheric pressure can and does affect the level of water. As example, a fall of only 1-millibar can raise the ocean level by 1 cm. High tides influenced by meteorological effects are known as King tides. Hurricanes raise the sea level as much as 6 meters along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and can do widespread damage inland. Waves are produced by the wind, the greater the velocity of the wind the larger the wave. Specialists studying geomorphology, use complicated mathematical formulae using measurements of wavelength from crest to crest and times between successive wave crests to calculate wave velocity. Which I have no intention to bore readers with. Waves are produced out in the open sea by on shore winds, when a waves enters shallow water's it breaks, the surge of water rushing from the broken waves is described as being swash. This is the water that runs up the sands and eventually returns to it. Some very interesting things happen whilst all this is taking place. It is the swash, running up the beach followed by the backwash, water returning to the sea that effects constant change in the shoreline. Beach material, be it sand or whatever is moved once the swash rolls up the beach and continues with the backwash until it returns to the sea once more. Forces of returning water to the sea cause what is known as undertow, where it is so great in certain parts of the beach localized rips occur. Rip currents occur in definite patterns on many beaches. The greater the velocity of the waves, the stronger the rip current. When a wave hits a beach at an angle, the resulting swash and debris move along the beach in a saw tooth like manner. The effects of this action is known as lateral beach drifting. Optimum long-shore drifting occurs when waves are at a 45-degree angle to the beach. During certain months of the year, depending on your locality the drift could be in a northerly direction from June to October and Southerly during the months of November to February as occurs in Port Philip Bay, Melbourne. Find out what's going on in your location of the world, it could make a difference not only in the way you search but also where and how you search. At the same time waves are arriving at an angle deflect the near-shore water circulation which results in currents travelling in one direction along the shoreline. This action effects both near-shore and long-shore channel drifting too. In short, it means that vast amounts of material can be moved along a beach over a given space of time. As I have stated in previous articles the sea is in a constant state of flux, this is perhaps a better way to describe this in a short sentence. The power of the sea, should never be under estimated, it is one of the most destructive forces known to mankind. Boulders weighing several tons can be moved and tossed about like a feather on the wind. During storms, the entire sand can be washed away leaving either a base of stones or clay. When situations like this do occur, it's then that the detector user will reap the benefits of recovering items lost many years ago. If you doubt what I am saying, the power of El Nino is having devastating effect on the US Coastline right at this very moment. Huge waves undermining cliffs, are causing giant landslides destroying homes and lives in the process. Look at your television screens and see what damage and destruction is taking place in Mexico and India for example. Although it has little or nothing to do with this article, I used it to illustrate the powerful forces of nature at work. All beaches have what is known as an incline or shear, which is the slope of the sand running into the sea. During certain months of the year, sand will be deposited up onto the beach, and at other's it will be removed and placed somewhere else. For the detector user, sand is your worst enemy, especially if you have a build up or concentration of it. For this reasons it, pay's to have the post powerful detector you can lay your hands on. These machines known as Pulse Induction machines are unaffected by salt water or black magnetic sands making them the ultimate beach hunting machines. Fine, you might say, but they are very sensitive to small pieces of ferrous metal and I cannot discriminate them out. True, yes, it's very true Pi's are sensitive to ferrous metal, but what you didn't realize was the fact that salt water is highly corrosive. Which means that by the time you move some distance seaward away from the shore, the less ferrous material you are likely to encounter. If you are using something else then you are not very serious about getting rings, because once you start using discriminators you will start losing rings. Turn up that discriminator just a little too much and your going to knock out what you are trying to find. Sounds to me like hitting your head up against a brick wall. It makes no difference to me what detector you use. I would rather dig up a bit of junk any day, rather than run the risk of missing out on a bit of gold in the form of a ring. You stick to your discriminators; I will stick to my pulse units and let you miss the things I find. What do you look for on a beach in order to start your search? For a start, you should go two hours before low tide. Some of the foreshore should be exposed by this time. Look at the shear and especially at it's base. Sometimes, you will see stones mixed in with the sand. This can be a good indication of bottom, although not in every case or situation. If you do, then start off by detecting parallel to the beach at the base of the shear for about 20 yards. Then move out towards the sea about four-five feet depending on the swing of your coil. I always prefer to overlap where I have already detected, just in case I missed a target in the last search. Turn around and detect the area back to where you started from. Sometimes you may find targets will not start appearing until you are 7 to 10 feet out from the base of the shear, but it is a good place to start. If you were lucky enough to be able to push the sea out for some distance, you would notice two distinct channels or troughs. These are the near-shore and long shore-channels these are really magical places to search and where most gold rings are to be found. The reason being that currents racing up and down them remove tons of sand. In doing so, they are in turn bringing those trinkets closer to your coil and giving you a better chance of detecting them. Remember sand is your enemy, the more you have of it the less chances you have of finding something. The detector that will detect a small target such as a gold ring at five feet has not been invented, yet alone being able to recover it from that depth anyway. Although, it is possible to dig holes in the sea-bed upto 3 feet deep, you have a constant problem of the sides falling back into the hole, which makes the going dammed hard work. However once you have the target out of the hole into your hand it makes the effort all worth while. Never walk away from a target in a hole until you have dug it out, if you do you might be leaving something behind for someone else to recover. I witnessed such an event on a gold field in Oz, the guy who walked away from the hole he was digging did his top when one of his mates took a 3.5 ounce nugget from the hole. Dig it, it is yours, walk away and it does not. It is never yours until you have it in your hand. Do not cry over spilt milk for your own stupidity or laziness if you are foolish enough to enrich other people. You will not get any sympathy from your mates or myself. Whenever I visit a new beach, I am not familiar with, I try to start at the waters edge detecting up the fore-shore for about 20 -30 yards, then move to the left or right and return to my starting point. This is the method used on the Australian gold fields and is known as gridding. Instead, to dragging a long length of heavy chain behind you, you drag your shovel behind you if you are on wet sand, or scoop if you are in the water. It is the only way I know where you can cover quite large areas very methodically. I leave the dry sands to the discriminating detector user's, knowing full well that most of the gold has been lost in water therefore the most logical places to find them is in that environment, or on the wet sands. However a certain amount of stuff does get lost on the dry sands, if I thought it was profitable then maybe I would be influenced to search there. Knowing my methods have worked for myself and other's for many years now, I stick to the most productive area's and get the results. The machines I use for the beach are in water the IMPULSE AND PI3000 which is only a back up machine these days. It is handy to have one in case of emergencies such as failed seals. Oh, yes I have had them but touch wood not on the Impulse yet. On the wet sands, I use a machine that many Americans have never heard of, the Goldscan 2, which is one of the deepest seeking pulse induction machines in the world. It is also one of the most successful recovery detectors's in Europe and the UK. This particular machine was made famous by Bill Harris and myself, I will give credit where it is due and Bill did a great job promoting the Goldscan for use over wet sands. I also use a Pulse Star, which is really a scientific detector for locating large objects buried very deep. The Pulse Star will detect an average size European car at about 27 feet. Not exactly, the sort of thing you would want to use on a beach, unless you want to dig four-foot holes digging up coke cans. As I did with Mick Killeen on my favourite beach in Australia. If I fancy a bit of a change on the land, then I have my trusty old White's Spectrum. Which is sadly gathering dust waiting for me to put it to good use once more. Irrespective of how many detectors an individual might have at his disposal, he can only use one at a time. Although all-purpose machines have come onto the market in recent years, I am satisfied with the machines I have at my disposal. A great many individuals have asked me what machine would I recommend, my advice is to take five or six gold items such as rings including one very small thin section ring and a chain. Several silver Items and a few coins. Make a chart with the detectors to be tested at the top of a sheet of paper and on the left-hand side write down a list of targets you have. Use a plastic or wooden ruler and do in air depth tests marking down the depths of each object detected with each machine. Then go away a think about it over several days. Brushing up on manufacturer's brochures as you do so. You have got to decide for yourself what machine you will end up with. You will be married to it for some time, so it had better be something your going to fall in love with. Many years ago, a guy walked into the offices of the London Daily Mirror, he had taken a front-page picture on a box-brownie, when all the photographer's were using Nikon's and Pentax cameras at the time. Irrespective of the type of detector you buy, you are bound to find something. Treasure Hunter's these days, though are becoming more sophisticated and more knowledgeable about detectors. I am waiting for the day, when someone develops a mini ultra sound machine so that you can look at the target before you dig it up. They do it in hospitals with babies, it is only a matter of time before some wise guy thinks, Now why did not I think of that. I am going to finish on cuts, a subject that was bought up on the Minelab Forum in my absence. Cuts are caused by a combination of wind and waves driven onto the beach at a certain angle. At the same time the backwash or returning wave removes huge quantities of sand. In doing so small cliff like structures appear and are continually eroded away by tidal action. Depending on the velocity and strength of the swash and back swash will govern the height of the actual cut. Areas such as this usually contain all sorts of goodies exposed and moved by the tidal action. It is wise to start a search from the bottom of the cut to the base of the shear. After clearing an area, move to the base of the shear and start detecting there. Each of these places are prime targets. Another great place to search if you can find it, is where rip activity has taken place. Either side of the rip are usually two distinct channels. Glory holes are usually found in these area's. I pulled no less than 75 pre-decimal coins out of a very small area on one occasion, and had to decrease my sensitivy to almost zero in order to isolate the signals because there were so many of them. This is why it pays to have a machine where you can reduce your sensitivity. Coastal Geomorphology, is a highly technical subject, it is physically impossible to reduce a 300-page book on the subject down to 5 pages or 3500 words in this case. If you really want to learn more about this fascinating subject, visit your local bookshop or library. Do something for yourself for a change instead of relying on other's to educate you. In doing so you will also increase your own knowledge and become more familiar with your surroundings next time you visit the beach. That knowledge will go a long way to making you successful yourself. Happy Hunting. ALAN HASSELL the Wizard maker. Hassell1@hotmail.com |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This site is best viewed in Internet
Explorer Version 5 or above with a minimum screen resolution
of 1024x768 |
|
|
| Detector Dicks Detecting
Diary. Articles Needed! Click here Require field tests and other info. This is your site...you have the info...send it and share it Click here . |
| This is where we can
put some news and other stuff that might be of interest to your clients. This is where we can put some news and other stuff that might be of interest to your clients. |
|
TIPS & TRICKS Water Hunting with the Explorer
This is where we can put Only gold detectors left to do now..
|
