Beach Stones

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Cool rocks & subject. I am also interested in rocks but know nothing about them. That one you found really does look like an egg. Who knows, maybe it was one?

Oh hey, ever herd of ambergris? Research it, if you find some it's very valuable. Wiki also says :

"Ambergris has been very highly valued by perfumers as a fixative that allows the scent to last much longer, although it has been mostly replaced by synthetic ambroxan.[3] Dogs are attracted to the smell of ambergris and are therefore sometimes used by ambergris searchers.[4]"

Another thing to look for on beaches is Amber. Wiki says :

"Amber is fossilized tree resin, which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects. Amber is used in jewelry. It has also been used as a healing agent in folk medicine. Wikipedia"

Just thought I'd mention these things sence your...
A) already on the beach.
B) already looking for stuff &
C) your dog might even lead you to it

Happy Hunting!
Tom

Absolutely! I do look for that sort of thing, however did you read this line in the Wiki?

United States – The possession and trade of ambergris is prohibited by the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

I'm not sure I'm ready to become an international smuggler of whale vomit... In addition, we have humpback whales around here, but I'm not sure if this area ever had sperm whales.

What I do try to find is "sea glass" - which is just weathered and worn pieces of colored glass bottles. I've never found any of significant size, just tiny little shards.

On a similar note, one of the things you to be careful of is thinking you have found a pretty rock, when it is actually just a piece of worn red brick or a chunk of smoothed concrete. I have also found smoothed pieces of wood that looks like a rock. The ocean is persistent and very patient!

[tongueriver]

A good friend spent time in Japan with DOD. He found many glass fishing net floats, from softball size to basketball size. Very cool.

[Montanaman]

I really liked the big white stripe running all the way through this one. Is the white stone limestone or is it some type of quartz?


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Very cool, not a rock hound here either, but for some reason I picked this up years ago and have kept it.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Here is some of the "sea glass" I was talking about - I found these this morning. As you can see, they are tiny. I'm guessing that the most common bottle to be thrown overboard must be Heineken - nearly all the glass I find is green!

[TPK]

Here is some of the "sea glass" I was talking about - I found these this morning. As you can see, they are tiny. I'm guessing that the most common bottle to be thrown overboard must be Heineken - nearly all the glass I find is green!

I was going to mention sea glass. I have seen people on TV who make very nice looking jewelry from it. There is also a plenty large amount of it for sale on the internet. Looks good. You could put it in the side of a knife that's missing it's shield and then fill up the rest of the space left with clear epoxy.

[TPK]

I found this piece of Quartz walking up Duke St. close to my house one day. It caught my eye because it looked like a potato on the smooth side.

Cool! How big is that?

If it was completely round it would be about the size of a tennis ball, so a pretty decent size.

Wow! Seems HUGE for quartz but maybe I just don't know much about quartz. It's possable.

[TPK]

A good friend spent time in Japan with DOD. He found many glass fishing net floats, from softball size to basketball size. Very cool.

OH COOL! I never heard of those before but those things are a real eye catcher.
They could also help explain why green sea glass is predominant.
I'll be watching Ebay if any of those come floating along.

Thanks for mentioning them!
Tom

[eveled]

You can make sea glass with a rock tumbler and some abrasive.

Those rocks with stripes are always cool to find.

Keep posting your finds guys it’s an interesting thread for sure.

[TPK]

Ok so here is my heart shaped beach stone. I did not find it though. My daughter found it on the beach in England & brought it back for me because she knows I like stones. She's a good kid. She has also bought me a couple of knives. A SAK & a RR.

[glennbad]

Neat stuff! I've always been one to pick up interesting rocks and such, but that's about as far as it goes. I have some smooth glass pieces somewhere from when we lived near Lake Champlain back in the day. I also have a piece of corprolite that I bought when I visited Utah years ago, LOL.

There's a place up north called Ruggles mine, where they let you go in and gather your own rocks and minerals. I've never found anything valuable, just large chunks of mica. In fact, I found more interesting rocks in the fill that they used when they built my driveway than other places.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Here's some stone I saw on the beach this afternoon during a low tide. There were TONS of cool rocks today. I decided that instead of hauling them home, I would just take pics of the rocks on the beach and leave them for others to enjoy.


This rock was weird - it was GREEN, and that is not algae or moss. It also had yellow splotches on it. When I first saw it, I thought maybe it was a painted stone that had ended-up on the beach - but I don't think so. I'm not sure I have ever seen a beach stone quite like this one.

This stone was riddled with holes - rock swiss cheese! It also gives you a good contrast for the green rock from above that it is sitting on.

This is a really pretty orange/rose-colored stone. I really like these. I think one of the reasons I like them is that they sort of remind me of WR Case Rose Bone or Appaloosa.

Here's one of the deposits of rocks that are sometimes uncovered on our beach. The beach can be completely sandy one day, and the next day one of these will appear.

[mrwatch]

we have about a 10 mile stretch of Lake Michigan known for Septarian nodules aka "lightning stones." one I ground and polished.

[Sharpnshinyknives]

I live nowhere near a beach unless you count the man made reservoirs that dot Indiana. But growing up on a farm in the 60’s and 70’s when farmers still plowed fields every year, I had a job at an early age of “hauling rocks”. Each year the plow turned up rocks that had to be removed before the planter could go through the fields. I saw first hand what the glaciers had done to the topography of Indiana. You could literally find any and every kind of rock there in those fields. Some as big as a house, and we never found the outer edge of them.
My first trip on an airliner we flew over areas close to where I grew up and you could see the difference in the soil where the top of hills use to be. It was always lighter colored earth w/ darker area’s where the valley’s use to be. Now it’s all just flat.
You can’t see that anymore w/ all the “no till” planting today. And the need to “haul rocks” isn’t as important either. But what a great lesson it was for me growing up.
My step brother who use to haul rocks w/ me, lives on the old farm and he made a beautiful fountain and pond out of some of those rocks. It’s still amazes me seeing such variety of rocks that were left from those glaciers so very long ago.
Glad to know I am not the only one here who is fascinated w/ rocks.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Wow, today was an awesome day for looking at beach stones. There were several really large deposits uncovered. Here's a few I found interesting.

This one has what I guess is some iron-rich veins running through it - I'm rich - it's the motherlode!

The closely spaced & uniform layers in this one are really cool.

This one looks like someone created a mosaic - the inlays are awesome!

This is a cool stone with a vein of limestone or quartz that looks like lightning, and below it is a shard from a really large mussel. I don't know why more knife handles aren't made from mussels - they can be just as beautiful as abalone and they are REALLY plentiful. Or, maybe they are, and they are just sold as abalone?

[WillyCamaro]

Great read so far, fun and very educational, keep them rocks coming . Half the fun is the hunt, never knowing what rocks you'll come across. It's a lot like snowflakes, no two will ever be the same.
Willy

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Just a couple of little guys today.


This one was really green with a confetti of smaller pieces of different colors. At first I thought this might be some sort of manmade material, but I don't know what would be this green?

This one was more of a light yellowish-green that reminded me of Jade.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Recently I learned how the perfectly round holes like the ones shown below are formed in beach stones. They are NOT simply worn into the rock by waves & currents - they are actually created by small shellfish called "Piddocks". On one part of their shell there is a set of hard ridges, and when they latch onto a rock with their very muscular foot, they can rotate back and forth grinding the hard edges against the rock. Over time, the result is a perfectly round hole bored into the stone. Once they are down in the hole, they never leave. They just keep grinding & making the hole wider and deeper. They stick a siphon tube up out of the hole to suck in algae and plankton. They can live for many, many years. Ain't nature cool?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholadidae

[1967redrider]

Those are cool, TFL.

[TPK]

Recently I learned how the perfectly round holes like the ones shown below are formed in beach stones. They are NOT simply worn into the rock by waves & currents - they are actually created by small shellfish called "Piddocks". On one part of their shell there is a set of hard ridges, and when they latch onto a rock with their very muscular foot, they can rotate back and forth grinding the hard edges against the rock. Over time, the result is a perfectly round hole bored into the stone. Once they are down in the hole, they never leave. They just keep grinding & making the hole wider and deeper. They stick a siphon tube up out of the hole to suck in algae and plankton. They can live for many, many years. Ain't nature cool?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholadidae


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Great story TFL! I wonder if the Microplastics are taking their toll on those "Piddocks"? Probably so.

[Old Folder]

Recently I learned how the perfectly round holes like the ones shown below are formed in beach stones. They are NOT simply worn into the rock by waves & currents - they are actually created by small shellfish called "Piddocks". On one part of their shell there is a set of hard ridges, and when they latch onto a rock with their very muscular foot, they can rotate back and forth grinding the hard edges against the rock. Over time, the result is a perfectly round hole bored into the stone. Once they are down in the hole, they never leave. They just keep grinding & making the hole wider and deeper. They stick a siphon tube up out of the hole to suck in algae and plankton. They can live for many, many years. Ain't nature cool?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholadidae


20200125_165824.jpg
20200125_165832.jpg

My wife found the below pictured rocks a few months ago on the beach, we have often wondered why and how the holes occurred.
Now we know.
Thanks for the explanation.

[glennbad]

Cool rocks, AND info!

[Old Folder]

My wife calls her Piddock inflected Beach Rock "Monkey Face"

[doglegg]

Well named