Searching for Sea Glass In October - Part1

Last week, the weather was fairly mild for mid-October, so I hit the beach in the morning a couple of days, hoping to find a few treasures. You never know what to expect at this time of the year... high tides, usually mean you will encounter many surf fisherman (and women). Low tide usually means mostly empty beaches.

On Long Beach Island, where I do the bulk of my searching, it's quite apparent that the landscape of the beaches no longer resemble what you were used to in the spring and summer seasons. The towns do not have the funds to maintain the beaches and only the threat of extremely bad weather will bring crews to the beach in hopes of saving the dunes that protect personal property.

Tire tracks cover the high tide area, so much of those treasures are either buried and/or broken under the tracks. The ocean preserves the low tide area, as the pounding waves end up creating sand barriers that separate the high and low tide areas. These barriers are actually cuts in the beach, that create a wall in the sand, sometimes only 8-12 inches high, but in other areas, the wall is actually 3 or 4 feet high!

These are great areas to search for sea glass and other treasures that the ocean has left behind, as shells, seaweed, driftwood, etc all gather at the base of the wall, waiting for the next extreme high tide to reclaim them. Or for me and the other treasure hunters to search them.

So, different landscape, much less foot traffic and somewhat better conditions for finding a few ocean treasures

I made two trips last week, one at about 8am-ish on both Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday's trip was a little too early to have the opportunity to be there for low tide. I did have the "wall" areas to search, as some of these walls were able to contain the high tide that day. And there were plenty of shell beds to look through.
Unfortunately, there were also a few different footprints near the gatherings also, so I had been beaten to the spot.

Despite getting there 2nd or 3rd or whatever, I did find several pieces of sea glass, most of which "under-cooked" and needed more time in the ocean. These were left for the next tide to reclaim to allow the ocean to do her thing- continue to breakdown the shard and return it to the sand it originated from...or hopefully place it back on the beach in the future, for me to claim and recycle, repurpose, etc.

I did find a few nothing-special browns and a green and on my return trip to my car, I was able to walk closer to the surf and examine what was being left behind. It was there that I found a soft green piece of sea glass, somewhat small, but nice thickness. Most likely, it's a piece of an old Coke bottle, but still it's was good to see that LBI could still turn out something other than new beer bottle shards.

I don't have pictures of my findings from last week yet...I'm working on them, but I hope you enjoy a few images of some current creations and recent sea glass findings. Come back tomorrow for part 2 : )

'til tomorrow...
R