Automatic Beachcomber

[trashdude]

Hey I'm reading a post on Florida Today. Says Cape Canaveral is considering buying automatic beachcombers to groom the shoreline. The Tourist Development Council is expecting to work with Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach on buying a $81,681 surf rake to begin cleaning the beaches before the April start of turtle nesting season.

This rake is 7-foot-wide with spring-loaded tines like stainless steel fingers, flicks cigarette butts, broken glass, plastic, bottle caps and other debris into a hopper pulled behind a tractor.

More than likely this will be approved. Say GOODBYE to any potential finds folks.

Here's the link: www.floridatoday.com (2 cities consider automatic beachcomber to groom beaches)

The trashdude

 

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[Dirt Fishin Dale]

I think that was one super salesman to tell them it would pick up all the cigarette butts.
If they set those tines that close together, all they will be doing is plowing the beach. Those rakes are made to pick up cans, bottles and other debris. Yes it will get some of the butts that are sideways. But the others will fall through with the coins and rings. Most of the watches will be picked up. But all in all I don’t think it will be too bad.
Also they can’t use the rakes during turtle nesting season witch runs from November to April.

I think I will give PETA a call about all the helpless crabs they will be raking up.

 

[trashdude]

82K for the rake, a tractor to pull the rake, a person to drive the tractor, fuel and maintenance. And this is just for ONE. We know all too well that one leads to two/three, etc, etc, etc. Seems like a lot of $ for beach cleanup. Smells like fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars to me. Don't know why we can't use INMATES. After all criminals are a drain on society anyway. Time for them to give back in the way of free labor.

Dirt Fishin Dale. I think you're onto something about contacting PETA about killing the crabs and not to mention other marine life. I may have to look into this further.

 

[seas1to2]

80% or more of all the metal trash is pick up for free by us. why spend that kind of money.

 

[trashdude]

seas1to2, I agree. This is another stupid waste of our tax dollars. Government waste is at all levels. Federal, state and local. Darn shame.

 

[DaChief]

The Clearwater and St. Pete Beach areas are cleaned each day in this manner. This is my main hunting area and I have been successful so far.

The key to hunting these areas is to determine what I call the "Layout Line" during the day. This is done by standing on the beach during the busy period and looking down the beach each way to determine the location in which most people lay their blankets and towels in relation to the high water mark. It changes each day. I believe that when the first guy gets there in the morning and puts his blanket down at ten feet from the high water mark, the next guy follows and so on. The next day, the first guy may put his down 20 feet away and then you see the line formed at that distance from the water. Once I determine that line, I wait until late afternoon when most folks leave the beach and start detecting down that line. You will find most things, "of course", right near the surface.

They don't comb near the dunes and other hard to get to areas. They also don't comb below the high water line.

The combs are proficient. You usually will not find anything but small items after they do their thing first thing each morning. Nickels, dimes and pennies seem to get missed but larger items than that are usually gulped up. I see very few cigarette butts on the ground so they must really work in that regard. I believe the depth quoted is probably best circumstance depth. I would say that they probably are more in the 4 to 5 inch effective range. Still they do get most of the stuff.

The surf is always untouched and that is where I spend most of my time during the day waiting for the later afternoon to do my shore hunting.

Just have to make the best out of what hand we are dealt!!!! Good Luck on the East side!!!

Da Chief

 

[trashdude]

Thanks for weighing in Chief. Just seems like an enormous waste of money to do something I believe Inmates could do. More cost effective I'd think. A real shame as the rakes will collect watches, chains, etc. Again, thanks Chief. Have a great holiday season.

 

[diggummup]

It's all in the timing. You gotta get to the beach before they rake the sand to get the good stuff. Around here that requires getting there before the sun is up each day or going at night right after sundown. DaChief makes a good point too with the layout line on the beach. PS-I don't believe inmates would do a good job of cleaning the beach, the sides of the highway/roads maybe, the beach no. The sand hides too much trash, this is where the rake comes into play.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

I'm not concerned, I would say at least 95% of my finds are below the depth that rake will pick up.

They could save a lot of money if they just pass $100 fine for smoking on the beach and make it illegal to take any kind of metal or glass containers on the beach. Another $100 fine for these containers would help, allow plastic only.

 

[DaChief]

I can say that the beaches really look nice first thing in the morning after they get done. I hear that the job of driving those things is pretty much sought after. I guess they may search their collections each day to see what they may have gotten. I believe that I would.

Diggummup is right about the morning also. I live too far from the beach to make it there in the morning so I wait till the afternoon. THunter is right too. That rascal pulled old silver out of St. Pete Beach this year from way down. I have dug some deep stuff too but I have yet to find any really good stuff deep on the dry sand. My dry sand hunts for the most part have consisted of coins and odd stuff like lighters. My trips to the beach come about once a month on average and I make a day of it. I get in the water when I get there in the morning hunt in the surf for hours. When I get tired, I put my Infinium in the truck and rest a while then go back out armed with my flashlight and my Sovereign and hunt the beach till I drop and I do mean drop. Last trip, I was plugging along and just gave out of steam well away from where I intended to stop. I just ran out of gas and couldn't swing one more swing. My typical trip involves about 10 to 12 hours of hunt time with brief breaks in between. I swore off such trips this year but still do it because I have to drive so far and want to get my money's worth while I am there.

I feel the same way about city street sweeping machines. I saw our city buy those things when we really needed some new Ambulances and Patrol Cars. The sweepers swept the sand and dirt from against the curb and pushed it out into the street. The cars would have it back where it was originally in about 1 hour. Back then we could by ten patrol cars for what one of those machines cost.

Take care everybody.

 

[954hunter]

The Clearwater and St. Pete Beach areas are cleaned each day in this manner. This is my main hunting area and I have been successful so far.

The key to hunting these areas is to determine what I call the "Layout Line" during the day. This is done by standing on the beach during the busy period and looking down the beach each way to determine the location in which most people lay their blankets and towels in relation to the high water mark. It changes each day. I believe that when the first guy gets there in the morning and puts his blanket down at ten feet from the high water mark, the next guy follows and so on. The next day, the first guy may put his down 20 feet away and then you see the line formed at that distance from the water. Once I determine that line, I wait until late afternoon when most folks leave the beach and start detecting down that line. You will find most things, "of course", right near the surface.

They don't comb near the dunes and other hard to get to areas. They also don't comb below the high water line.

The combs are proficient. You usually will not find anything but small items after they do their thing first thing each morning. Nickels, dimes and pennies seem to get missed but larger items than that are usually gulped up. I see very few cigarette butts on the ground so they must really work in that regard. I believe the depth quoted is probably best circumstance depth. I would say that they probably are more in the 4 to 5 inch effective range. Still they do get most of the stuff.

The surf is always untouched and that is where I spend most of my time during the day waiting for the later afternoon to do my shore hunting.

Just have to make the best out of what hand we are dealt!!!! Good Luck on the East side!!!

Da Chief

I agree, these machines are only as good as the poorly paid and disinterested local employees running them.

 

[trashdude]

Well, I know we all have opinions about these machines, the people that operate them and how well/bad they do the job. I was reading another small article that stated they WILL be approved. So with that being said, I'll resort back to the old military saying "Adapt, Overcome and Improvise". Look forward to hittin' these beaches to find out what happens. Take care and good huntin'

 

[SeabeeRon]

Hey DaChief, your two posts are right on. The way you scope out the "layline" is just what I do out here on the West Coast. As for the beach cleaning machines, I sometimes follow in thier paths and pick up quite a bit! I remember as a kid following those guys around wihing I could get that job!

 

[trashdude]

Ha Ha Salvor1. I bet you're right.

 

[Mike Silver -gold]

They have these machines in a beach I hunt in Canada. I only hunt in the water there so I don,t care. Now my uncle did hunt the dry sand. He swore they got just about everything. I asked the operator who got to go through the finds. He said are you nuts. Did you ever look in that cage? It is full of dead fish and baby diapers. Yuck he was right. Mike.

 

[trashdude]

Well, seeing as it's going to be approved anyway, I'll just have to see it in action. I'm still going to search regardless. No stupid machine's going to stop me.

 

[SeabeeRon]

Well, seeing as it's going to be approved anyway, I'll just have to see it in action. I'm still going to search regardless. No stupid machine's going to stop me.

That's the spirit!!

 

[trashdude]

Hey thanks Seebee. I just needed to look at the bigger picture I guess---my love for the hobby. Have a great holiday and HH.

 

[trashdude]

I talked with a friend of mine who informed me that the machine collects larger items mostly. Coins and smaller jewelry slip through. Sounds like it won't be too bothersome afterall. HH.

 

[FLauthor]

They are doing you a favor. A surf rake will probably be set shallow sweeping the surface of the litter that slob tourists & locals leave behind. And not all TH'ers keep the trash they dig. I've found a lot of holes in the past with an old beer can laying next to the hole. Check out the URL: http://www.hbarber.com/Cleaners/SurfRake/HowItWorks.aspx . They could set the machine to go as deep as 4 or 6 inches but 95% of the trash is on the surface and the deeper it digs, the slower the operation. Find out where they are dumping the trash contents and do some dumpster diving, it might pay off.