Beach Combing?

Any modern day Beachcombers out there? And, what was your score?

Aloha Ben,
I read in a magazine there is this big northwestern beachcomber scene. Oregon, Washington and Northern California are in some sort of favorable current for shipping lane flotsam and jetsam. They interviewed a guy who had all these glass fishnet floats. He claimed there are still a bunch floating around the pacific. He had purple colored ones that he claimed were only used on Japanese Imperial Ships. He spoke of two modern incidents of beachcombing that cracked me up. One was a huge container of Hockey Gloves headed for Canada from Asia was washed over the side of a ship. Hockey gloves washed up on northwestern beaches by the thousands. Another story was a huge container of Nike tennis shoes was pushed over the side of a ship. Websites were set up so different people with a collection of these shoes could "match" a pair of size and style. On a side note the difference between flotsam and jetsam is that one is washed over the side and the other is actually pushed over the side. I've been walking the beaches since I was a kid and I've found nothing.
Mahalo,
Al

Hey Al,

I didn't know that was the difference between flotsam & jetsam.

I've been both flotsam'd and jetsam'd off a boat before!

A little more info on flotsam and jetsam....

Flotsam, by old mariner law, is debris found drifting or washed ashore as a result of a shipwreck, or cargo washed overboard as the result of wind or sea.

Jetsam, by old mariner law, is cargo purposely dumped overboard from a ship in peril of sinking to lighten its load, in a last ditch effort to keep the ship afloat. Jetsam refers to that cargo whether it floats or sinks.

So, Bong, were you floating or sinking jetsam?

Okay.... so I'm a little bored and consulted Oxford....

:tiki:

Trader Pup

visit Traderpup.com

[ Edited by: Traderpup on 2002-10-17 09:59 ]

I walk the beach pretty much daily and have only found surf wax, shells, all kinds of dead fish, seals, crabs and birds, broken surfboards, fins, leashes etc. Fortunately, I have yet to find any medical waste. On the glass float tip, My Wahine was bringing a boat back from Hawaii and was told to keep her eyes open for the glass balls because they are everywhere. The crew only saw one and the captain kept it cause he spotted it. I was really hoping she was going to score one of those. I remember as a kid coming across boxes of them left out for the trash to pick up. At the time I was young and destructive and was more into smashing them. I now wish that I would of kept a few of them. They are kind of valuable now I hear because they are no longer made using glass but with plastic.
Chongolio

During the last el nine-yo!, my son then 4 and I were cruising the shores of H.b. We were a slight distance away and he yelled, dad I found a duck! Oh god, I'm thinkin he's holding a dead duck. But as I approached him, he had a piece of driftwood that was the exact size and shape of a duck! It's hung on our wall still and he is 7 now. Going up to Mendocino in Feb. Should be some good hunting by then. My cousin lives up there and found 4 giant redwoods at the bottom of the Russian river totally petrified! I wish I could load some pics of my Grandfathers Beachcombing days. You would all trip out. I think Sven is going to do a Beachcomber book and it'll have many pics in it. Fish float balls bigger than a hippity hop! Gone are the days.

As a kid growing up in Orkney I used to go beachcombing everyday (young and energetic and living 18 miles from the nearest peedie town) but I never found anything really cool unless divers torches, weather ballon instrament packs and animal skulls count.
the Jetsome find I wish i had found came ashore about ten miles away from our beach.
One day this customs officer was walking his dog on Yesnaby beach when he noticed amounst the higwater line junk these thirty bales of hashish, so he alerted his office and they put the bales under observation for three month and no one even gave them a second glance. They eventualy notified the press and showed of their find, gosh I was annoyed but it really gave me a new impetous to keep beachcombing.

The cool things you can find on the shore! That one would make up for all of the crap I've found in my days.

Trustar

Beachcombing is still a big attraction here in Oregon. Recently,the Lincoln City Chamber of Commerce began a program of taking new, good quality, glass balls out to sea and tossing them overboard (Cultured floatsam and jetsam".} I still haven't found one in the last 20 years.
I remember the Nike tennis shoe incident. It gave a whole new meaning to the term "sneaker wave".

We found a puffer fish on the beach in Los Cabos. It was dead and stinky! My wife still was going to try to bring it home. "Unfortunately" housekeeping kidnapped ol' puffy and that was that. On this same beach a friend of the family was walking the shore and a wave stole his prescription glasses. The next day my cousin is walking the shore 1/4 mile or so down the beach. He finds some glasses and takes them back to the hotel. It turned out that those were the same glasses lost the day before.

Ok, here goes:

TRUE STORY

I was born in Cocoa Beach, Fl, and in some of my formative years we lived very near the beach. My Mom was a real shell collector and got me started in it as a youngster, but I digress. Anywho, Mom was a real "corker" (no pun intended, see below) and in 1981 we went on a family cruise to the Panama Canal/Carribean Zone.

We're on the ship and one of the many "do's/don'ts" was a don't about throwing things over the rail. Well, whether she had premediated this or not, Mom inserted a note in a wine bottle, sealed it up and...oh yeah...she throw it over. She did this without my knowledge, and apart from an "uprising" in Cartagena, the cruise was uneventful.

So, how do I know my Mom did this dastardly deed on the high seas? Forward now a few months, like almost a year. I see in our mail a peculiar envelope (airmail) from somewhere Cay. Mom opens it up and it's the note she threw over the S.S. Fairwind someplace in the Caribbean! :o A local fisherman, or so he said fiosherman, found it walking the beach of his island paradise.

Mom wrote back once and the sharp-eyed beachcombing chap responded, with a request for currency...hard, the more the better. Needless to say, the financial nature of the discourse sounded the deathknell to Mom's correspondence with her new penpal.

The odds? I don't know, but it happened.

midnite

[ Edited by: midnite_tiki on 2002-10-21 16:17 ]