Tidewater Virginia - Finding Lost Items Beach or Park

Location! Location! Location!  Most important for any detectorist in helping you recover a lost item is to attempt to remember as many details as possible on the area lost.  The next most important item is to seek help as soon as possible after a loss – many detectorists work the dry sand and the ocean tends to bury items out of range quickly.

For the beach:

– Specific buildings

– Lifeguard stands

– Street names, numbers or beach access points

– Relationship to water, wet or dry sand

– Trash cans

Google Earth is your friend.  Bring up location on Google Earth.  For those with newer iphones, you can simultaneously depress the upper buttons on right and left side of your phone.  This will take a screenshot. Hit Done. Before trashing pic, allows you option of saving to your photos – save the screen shot.  You can then pull up in photos and edit – like “X” marks the spot.   That pic can then be sent to whomever is working your recovery.  In this case, a picture us worth more than a 1000 words.

Note: At many of the larger beaches such as Virginia Beach, Ocean City Md, motorized equipment called sand cleaners are used.  My experiences most recently are with Virginia Beach and South Florida beaches.  The equipment at each location appears to narrowly skim the surface.  Jewelry, cellphones, coins and other items are still recovered after this equipment passes.

For parks, again location, landmarks and speed to request assistance.

Most large parks use very large self propelled mowers to mow the grounds. These mowers generate tremendous power and suction.

Translated – if your ring or necklace or bracelet goes thru one of these mowers chances are slim that it will look like when lost.  Additionally, these mowers can fling your item a long ways.