how to find a ring in the sea Tag | The Ring Finders

Lost Ring at Tokerau, Found in the sea

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)
Back up to Tokerau Beach, NZ, for a wedding ring in the tide this time.
Nathan was playing with his daughter in waist deep water, throwing her up and catching her.
As he released her, he saw his wedding ring come off and drop into the water. They searched for some time before accepting the ring was lost.
Back on shore, Nathan took a bearing and paced out an approximate distance to where he thought it was- then gave me a call.
I arrived for the evening low tide, waded out and got to work to find his lost wedding ring.
The sand leveled out below low tide mark, so “waist deep” went out about 50m or so – A huge potential area.
I had searched the indicated area by the time failing light and tide forced me out. Regrettably I advised Nathan that I had been unsuccessful, with nothing more than a handful of lead sinkers and rusty hooks in the pouch.
But I don’t walk away easily…
Up at 4am, I was back in the tide just after 5 – sharing the shallows with the dorsal fins of a dozen Rig sharks, focused on their own search for crabs as the night gave way to dawn.
I reviewed the search area of the previous day and decided that I was generally happy that had the ring been there, I would have likely found it.
I decided to extend the search area.
After about 2Hrs using various search patterns, I got a distinct ‘double thump’ of a shallow target, some 20m from the original area.
I lifted the scoop, sifted the sand out in the water and heard that ‘jangle’ that tells me – Job Done.
I think I woke Nathan up when I phoned him, “I’ve got something of yours here…”
It didn’t take him long to get down to the beach!
If you lose an item at the beach, make a note of where you are. Line up two landmarks, even better, line up another two at right angles to the first. Then give me a call, and I’ll do my utmost to get it back to you.

Lost earring at Cable Bay, Mangonui – Found using Metal Detector.

  • from Paihia (New Zealand)

Alexandra had been with family at Little Cable Bay in Doubtless Bay, enjoying the sun and a warm but deep rockpool during the day.
She was understandably very upset to learn later that she had lost a very precious gold and diamond earring.
Her partner contacted me as to whether it was possible to recover it.
Unfortunately, I had spent the day conducting a dive search for a lost propeller in a marina at Whangarei, so was too tired to make the drive safely that night. however I was able to negotiate with my long-suffering boss to take the afternoon off the following day and headed up to search for it.
There were two high probability areas; Where they had been based on the beach, and the rockpool.
I quickly scanned the indicated area on the beach, although nothing found.
So, a quick trip back to the car to change in preparation to get wet in the rockpool, accessible only at low tide.
Alexandra had to head back to work so left me to it.
An earlier promising signal in the rockpool turned out to be an ancient 2c piece, followed by an old fishing knife, and many small fishing leads.
Confident the time-critical pool was cleared, I returned to the beach and started a systematic high level search of the dry sand.
About an hour later, the earring surfaced in the scoop, some 15m away from where it was supposed to be, and probably flicked off a towel.
Alexandra met me later in Coopers Beach for an exchange of big smiles and the earring.