Sea Hearts

After a morning of fishing in McNab with nothing to show but some windblown cheeks and sore arms, we headed to the beach for a little search & rescue. I have a mission to rescue some beach beans from becoming buried in the dunes forever.

You can see from this picture that the flotsam ended up in the dunes after the storm. The seeds are light and follow the tide to the debris line. In addition to the natural driftwood and seaweed there are a myriad of other man-made items that end up in the mix.

Here is a sea coconut as-found in the debris. This drift seed is also called the "golf ball" as it resembles a lost ball after it is bleached out by the sun. If one is found with the outer husk intact, this seed can be polished to a glossy shine.

I'm working on one and will post the finished product one day.

I spotted several coconuts and tried not to pick them all up. I did end up with this one showing a piece of the shell still attached to the husk and another one that was mostly just seed that I'm cleaning up.

Here are the seeds I bagged from this trip. Lots of the usual characters but some new ones as well. I found three Hamburger Beans - two red ones and one brown one.

Also note the three sea hearts in the upper left. These are what most folks think of when they hear the term "sea bean". I was excited to find these and even though one was smashed it was a start to the collection.


Brown Hamburger Bean on left and two Red Hamburgers in the middle and on right.


Hamburger beans are cool!

Here are two of the sea hearts, The large one is pretty smooth and glossy and the smaller one needs some polishing. Both were found in plain sight with minimal effort - you just needed a sharp eye.

The smaller one was partially buried but the color is a dead give a way.

We spotted this egret along the beach road on the way out. Sometimes you need to have the camera ready for every opportunity.