{"id":15843,"date":"2016-03-10T13:59:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T18:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/?p=15843"},"modified":"2016-03-10T13:59:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T18:59:16","slug":"shore-beaches-yield-hidden-treasures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/2016\/03\/10\/shore-beaches-yield-hidden-treasures\/","title":{"rendered":"Shore Beaches Yield Hidden Treasures"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Artifacts<\/a>
Artifacts recently found during the sand-replenishment project from Deal to Loch Arbour. They include machine gun bullets , 22 cal rifles bullets, and one unknown caliber maybe a tracer round, then an ancient great white shark tooth, a quartz Indian spearhead, a copper thimble, and two Indian head pennies 1897 and 1901, and an Italian lire coin circa late 1860s; and 13 musket balls.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By DON STINE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sun bathers hitting the beaches from Deal to Loch Arbour this summer should not be surprised if they find an old bullet, button or other artifact in the sand.
\nSand for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers beach replenishment project from Loch Arbour to Deal is being taken off of Sandy Hook, host to the U.S. Army\u2019s Civil War era Fort Hancock.
\nOld bullets and musket balls, uniform buttons, coins and even old shark teeth have been found in the sand since it was placed on the beach in Deal.
\nClean Ocean Action Executive Director Cindy Zipf said her organization deals mainly with ocean water quality rather than beach replenishment issues. But, she said it should be no surprise that old military artifacts will be in the beach-replenishment sand since Fort Hancock was used extensively for training and munitions testing since the Civil War.
\nZipf said that people should be \u201cunderstandably concerned\u201d if their child finds a bullet or munition in the sand but she said finding old artifacts on the beach, as long as they are safe, is also a form of historic preservation.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a kind of historic excavation and provides evidence about activities that occurred on Sandy Hook in the past. Maybe your find will be a treasure- it\u2019s a very historic region,\u201d she said.
\nTreasure hunters and the curious should be advised that it is illegal to enter any ongoing federal beach-replenishment site.
\nAnd while finding a piece of history is fun and interesting, in this case caution also needs to be applied, a local munitions collector said.
\nLast year about 180 World War I-era booster components for firing howitzers were found on the beach in Loch Arbour and Allenhurst and the Army Corps plans to sift the sand down eight feet to remove them, although a date has not been announced when that project will begin.
\nArthur Green, who lives in West Long Branch and collects military artifacts including spent or deactivated ordnance, said caution always needs to be used when dealing with any ordnance, old or new.
\n\u201cFrom what I am seeing coming off the beach, there are some cartridges in the original metal wraps, not just the projectiles. They are complete cartridges but smaller caliber, like 22s,\u201d he said.
\nGreen said some ordnance propellants can get more volatile with age and, even if in salt water for decades, one cannot assume water has gotten into the bullet.
\n\u201cAlways treat any ordinance as if it were live and potentially hazardous,\u201d he said.\u201cIf you can\u2019t identify it, then I would not even touch it. Just mark the area, contact some official and report it. You shouldn\u2019t go around collecting it and picking it up. Weird things happen and it\u2019s better to be safe than sorry.\u201d
\nGreen said the boosters the Army Corps is looking to remove remind him of old CO2 cartridges for pellet air guns and are about the size of a C- or D-size battery.
\n\u201cPeople could think they are just an old car part and pick them up but they need to be concerned and careful about them. If the Army Corp is collecting them then they must see some hazard in them,\u201d he said.
\nThe sifting project will not remove smaller objects, like bullets, coins or buttons.
\nBeachgoers in Loch Arbour and Deal were prohibited from digging deep holes in the sand or having bonfires due to concerns over the boosters last year. However, the situation did not affect beach attendance and beach revenues and attendance were pretty consistent with those of the previous year, an Allenhurst official said.
\nLoch Arbour\u2019s Board of Commissioners recently passed a resolution urging the Army Corps and the state Department of Environmental Protection \u201cto do everything in their power to commence the project to clean-up the village\u2019s beach.\u201d
\nLarger-sized stones that also came in with the sand are also a concern there.
\nDeal Borough Administrator Stephen Carasia said that no date has been set yet for the sifting of the sand due to a lack of funding since it was not in the project\u2019s original budget.
\n\u201cIn February there was still no funding but hopefully they will do it by the summer season,\u201d he said.
\nHe said sand will be shifted between Loch Arbour and Clem Conover Road in Deal.
\nZipf said the Army Corps removes sand from Sandy Hook because the natural littoral drift in the ocean dumps it there naturally.
\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s better to remove sand from these areas of sand accrual than to take it from natural offshore shoals that are important marine life and fisheries,\u201d she said.
\nThe 3.5-mile project will replenish beaches from the Elberon section of Long Branch south to Loch Arbour by pumping about 3.4 million cubic yards of sand onto beaches at a cost of $3.8 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  By DON STINE Sun bathers hitting the beaches from Deal to Loch Arbour this summer should not be surprised if they find an old bullet, button or other artifact in the sand. Sand for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers beach replenishment project from Loch Arbour to Deal is being taken off of Sandy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15843\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoaster.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}