Issue 25 Summer 2004

Along the east coast of Florida, September and October are typically the most bountiful times to find drifting seeds also known by collectors as "sea beans". Tidal cycles leave behind sea beans along with seaweed, driftwood, tar, trash, and other floatable items. This line of debris on the beach is called a wrack. With each successive tide, the wrack is pushed farther toward the dune line. However, sometimes a high tide will sweep over the wrack and pull it back out to sea, carrying the seaweed and drift seeds to another beach. Ocean currents, connected to each other in a huge global transit system, can carry sea-beans from current to current. A seed from Jamaica could conceivably travel to Florida, then to Long Island, and then across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom.

In Eastern Florida, the ability to find drift seeds on the beach is affected by a number of conditions. The prevailing winds perhaps being the most dominant condition affecting abundance. With an East wind (i.e., wind from the east), the winds affect floating objects and blow them westward toward Florida's eastern shore. The best time of year for this to begin to occur is in October, but it continues throughout the winter. Note, however, that sea-beans can be found throuthout the year, but are simply much more abundant at some times of the year.

Additionally, the proximity of the swift Gulf Stream current carry sea-beans close to Florida's eastern coast. Sea beans have a shorter distance to be pushed westward toward Florida's eastern shore.
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When viewing our text products one will occasionally see a reference to the Treasure Coast. The Treasure Coast is roughly the coastal area bordered from Sebastian Inlet from the north to Jupiter inlet to the South.

On July 31, 1715, a savage hurricane swept across the Bahama Channel from the northeast, catching in its path a large Spanish treasure fleet on its way from Havana to Spain. It was a disaster to the fleet and to the King of Spain Phillip V. His fortunes rose and fell with the arrival or loss of the fleet as he often faced bankruptcy. This fleet was very important because it was the first fleet leaving the new world in four years. It carried an accumulation of gold and silver coins and bullion from the New World mints.

To the fleet, it was chaos. There were twelve vessels, five of these from General Ubilla's Nueva Espana fleet, six of General Echeverz Galcones fleet and a French vessel. The French vessel accompanied the fleet back to Spain for protection and was the only one that survived. The rest of the fleet disintegrated on the jagged coral reefs of Florida between Fort Pierce and Sebastian Inlet.

Over seven hundred lives were lost, including General Ubilla, and $14 million in gold and silver was scattered over the beaches and reefs a few hundred yards offshore. There was a salvage effort by the Spanish, but when their work was done, a great quantity of treasure remained undiscovered. One of the survivors, Captain Sebastian Mendez, the pilot of Nuestra Senora del Carmen, spoke of a hurricane that came on from the east-northeast so strongly that although he has sailed the seas for many years and suffered through many tempests he has never seen another like it for violence, and his ship and all the rest were lost. Today treasure still continues to be found from these wreck sites off the Florida Coast and along the beaches after storms.