Ruining A Public Beach For Metal Detecting

We have this thing in Florida called beach "renourishment" that the powers-that-be seem to think is required every four or five years to keep soft sand under a tourists chair. It's been happening for a long time, since at least 1968 or earlier, where a special contractor comes in with an offshore dredge to suck tons of sea-bottom sand into humongous, horribly rusted, iron pipes, and spray it like an over-pressured lawn sprinkler all over the local beach. 

This can build up the sand from literally sea-level to almost 12-feet deep along a 15-mile stretch of Central Florida east coast, and literally puts targets more than out of reach as to make recoveries of previous days non-existent. On top of THAT, comes 3 or 4 months of the biggest bulldozers CAT makes, roaring up and down the public beach, spewing diesel fumes and leaving deep, oil-soaked tracks in the sand. 

As if THAT was not enough, the huge iron pipes from the offshore dredge scatters thousands, no, millions, of 1/4-inch to 1-inch ferrous fragments over 15-miles of beach and shallow water. This literally makes the coastal area dang near impossible to hunt. After a week in the wet sand and shallow ocean water, the fragments quickly develop an iron "aura" around them as the increasing rust causes a "deep rusted iron" effect by making the target react like silver or any other conductive signal of various values, so you cannot tune or discriminate them out. Today while detecting an effected beach, I ran into a guy using a like-new Minelab Excalibur, who was a pretty experienced beach detectorist, but was an out-of-town tourist going a a cruise to the Caribbean for the Thanksgiving holiday. He was complaining about how difficult it was to metal detect the beach with all the metal fragments, everywhere. The powers-that-be here in Florida always overlook the economic impact that being stupid about beach policies can bring, with the previous panic brought about by Florida Governor Rick Scott signing a law that lets water-front homeowners block off sections of the previously regularly-used-by-the-public beach; putting the public on the back burner over beach-use for the 9th time. I like to think there is no animosity toward practitioners of the metal detecting hobby by state and county officials, but a short conversation with a county employee makes me think otherwise. A little over a year ago, in late 2017, I was enjoying my solitude, swinging my coil over the wet sand on Cocoa Beach, when one of those stinky, gasoline-powered carts showed up carrying a smiling County guy. He says to me, over the lawn-mower whine of his giant roller-skate, "Enjoy metal detecting while you can...you got a week left before we cover this area with ten-feet of sand!" He waved evilly and departed in a cloud of powdered-sugar dust from the donut in his hand. I watched the guy vanish south down the beach, hoping a Great White would come bursting out of one of the rolling waves and yank the cart and passenger back to the depths, but apparently Great Whites are not as fond of powdered sugar as other monsters are...like Godzilla, or maybe Rodan...or....
Today, less than a year later, pens of restless bulldozers, and stacks of rusty iron pipes litter this same beach again. Some beach regulars, mostly surfers and a few fishermen, were obviously angry and yelling at the people inside the  dredging "compound" about their very unwelcome presence. The process screws up beach detecting, literally muddies the water for months and ruins fishing even longer. I'm off my soap-box now.  

Hassled Homeowners - Permission Or Else!

As I often write, metal detecting private property depends on getting permission, and then exercising great care excavating targets once you have that permission. I don't metal detect as much as I used to due to declining health, but depending on my blood pressure, the weather and heat index, I still do spend an occasional enjoyable morning or afternoon on a permission site, listening carefully for buried treasure. I also try to be an ambassador for the hobby, keeping an ear to the ground in the general public, keeping the conversation alive in daily encounters. What I DO hear does not bode well for the hobby. As an engineer, I used to work as as a medical auditor for a medical device company, validating other suppliers were in compliance with all FDA regulations required to produce a certain device, a bone drill, for example. I did this for many years, and the very best tool I had for determining FDA compliance was not a clipboard with a checklist, not a flashlight or a magnifier...it was Body Language that always revealed the truth of whatever matter was at the forefront of the discussion.

The De-Evolution Of The Hobby

I'm not going into the intricacies of body language, but, it does work, and I find it a great source of unrealized truthful communication in many situations. At any rate, Patti and I usually drop hints we practice the hobby among the general public at various times and encounters, and mention our organization, The Central Florida Metal Detecting Club, during the discussion. The reaction and facial expressions are priceless. We were is a antiques shop in Sanford, Florida one day, when Patti let the other shoe drop and mentioned we practiced metal detecting for police evidence hunts, lost and found issues within the general public, et al. The shop-owners face literally fell...then she frowned. "I got this guy who calls me all the time and constantly pleads with me to dig up my yard!" She sighed and looked at the floor in anger. "Why do they not understand the word NO!" She looked up again. "This guy calls me several times a week, same request, and I told him to lose my private number a few weeks ago...but he called again yesterday!" 

So here is a random member of the public who went from happy-talk to frowning and angry words in seconds after we mentioned the hobby of metal detecting.  The hobby I started practicing over 50-years ago, has become a contentious, greed-filled pastime in so many areas, the general public looks on people who do participate in the hobby as looters, criminals, trespassers and troublemakers. And we only have ourselves to blame. A large number of dishonest hobbyists nowadays engage themselves in deception; impersonating officials or workers, sneaking onto properties the back-way from waterways and lakes, submerged under someones private dock digging coins and valuables without permission and unknown to the actual property owners, metal detecting the dead of night using night-vision technologies, or just plain trespassing...hoping to liberate valuables before they are discovered and asked to leave...what I would term Day-Hawking  We also think there is a lot more Night-Hawking going on in Florida than was previously proposed.

All detrimental to those of us simply enjoying a harmless, and so far, legal hobby of metal detecting in the search of forgotten items of history, attempting to liberate them from the matrix of time back into the light of day and the public domain. We have had little success in turning this train-wreck of a hobby around because more and more are in it for the supposed profit ("I'm gonna quite my job and buy a METAL DETECTOR, that's what I'll do!") and easy income they think it will provide. Every day we see another comment "We are THINKING of getting into this GREAT hobby...what do you suggest?" Then the same old discussion of not having much money, and what would a good starter machine would cost and WHERE is the best place to find all that gold and silver? 

I've said this before and I'll say it again...I am not opposed to more individuals entering the metal detecting hobby, but I AM opposed to more taking and less giving by people entering the hobby. In other words, several thousand more people hunting the beach with metal detectors is not going to improve the hobby any more than several thousand more fisherman is going to improve the fishing in a small pond that's already been fished out. We need to add more voices to save this hobby and try and roll back legislation intended to limit or eliminate the hobby completely, but I don't see that happening here in the United States...what I do see is more of the general public grabbing a metal detector and digging like a dog in the nearest dune, then angrily walking away if no gold or silver is found, leaving a mess and looking for a fresh flower bed to rut in; one more black-eye on the hobby. The saddest thing is you know who you are...and you just don't care. I'm off my soapbox now.