Beach Treasures and Beachcombers

Seashells, driftwood, sea glass and sea beans wash up on beaches every day.  Early morning beachcombers find the best treasures as they walk along the shoreline seeking gifts from the sea.  Many seek rare or perfect shells.  Others seek elusive sea beans or unique colors of sea glass.  It can become an addiction.

I fell in love with seashells when a third grade teacher shared her shell collection with the class.  Each week she taught about another shell. Holding the shell took us to a magical world.  The best part is that she created future beachcombers.  After an introduction to a new shell, she would give her students one of those shells to glue into a cardboard box.  I carefully printed the name of the shell into the box and meticulously arranged jingle shells, rose cockleshells, and olive shells with third grade precision.  Each shell became the perfect gem in my young eyes. A beachcomber was born. Much to my husband’s dismay, nearly 47 years later, I can’t walk a beach without finding a treasure to take back to the boat.

I didn’t pay much attention several years ago when a friend and former cruiser, Mary Ann Emenecker of the sailing vessel Owaso gave me a Sea Heart Bean.  She explained that sailors carry the heart shaped beans as a good luck charm to protect them from sickness and bad luck.  I forgot about it until I found my first “heart” bean on a Bahamas beach last winter.

One might ask, what is a sea bean?   That was my very question when a fellow cruiser, Yvonne Wilkins from sailing vessel Options III, expressed excitement about the “hearts” and the “hamburger” beans she had found earlier in the day. We went searching the next day. I was hooked.  Now I search for both beans and shells.

Sea Hearts come from the Monkey Ladder vine that is found in the rain forests of the tropics.  According to Sea-Beans.com, the thick vines drape over the treetops to provide shelter and highways for monkeys, snakes and birds.  The seedpods of the Monkey Ladder vine can grow up to six feet long.  Seeds fall into the lowland rivers and are carried out to sea in tropical storms and hurricanes.  Once in the ocean, currents can carry these seeds thousands of miles.

In the cruising world beachcombers get excited when they find a Mucuna seed, the true name for the “Hamburger” bean.   The one inch round medium to dark brown seed has a thick black band called a hilum that nearly circles the circumference of the seed making it look like a hamburger patty between two buns.   Like the Sea Heart many species of Mucuna seeds also originate from woody, high climbing vines in the tropics.

Sea beans have been used to make rosaries, belts, snuff boxes, lockets and other jewelry.  The hard seeds can be polished to a glistening shine with 1000 grit sand paper.  Or, one can tumble them in a rock tumbler with sand. A fellow cruiser and friend, Joann Shuttleworth from the sailing vessel Dreamweaver, collected over 150 Sea Hearts and over 50 hamburger beans one season.  Each day she combed the beach with a collection bag hanging from her waist and a bottle of water in a backpack.  When she returns home from sea, her discoveries are displayed in bowls and crystal containers.

One doesn’t have to go to the Bahamas to find sea beans.  North Atlantic beaches offer the collector a large variety of sea beans that wash in with the waves.   Sea beans that originate from South America, Central America, Mexico, and the West Indies eventually are caught in the powerful Gulf Stream and carried north.  Sea beans can also originate from Australia and Hawaii.

These sought after seeds get trapped in patches of seaweed that wash up on the shores of Gulf Coast states, eastern Florida, along the Carolinas or New Jersey banks, according to naturalist Cathie Katz in her newsletter “The Drifting Seed.”  Sea-Bean.com states that many of the seeds are impervious to salty water and can float for several years without breaking down.  Beans can make trans-Atlantic voyages and end up on the shores of Western Europe.

Drifting seeds are usually lumped under the term of “Beans” by collectors.  Collectors also treasure the smooth yellow, gray and brown Nicker Nuts as well as the Star Palm Nut.  Sea Purses are more rare and look like a purse shaped Hamburger Bean.   The black Mary’s Bean originates from the rain forests of Costa Rica and is very rare.

The good place to find sea beans is high along the shoreline in piles of dried sea grass.  I have a bamboo pole that I use to lift and shake the grass.  A two-hour beach hike might result in four Hamburger Beans, but then several weeks might pass before another bean appears.  “Drifting seeds of varied shapes, sizes, and colors have long captured human curiosity. Beautiful and inspiring, they carry with them the lure of distant exotic lands, and far away places,” explained Katz.   Perhaps the lure is that such as a pretty seed can make such a long journey.

The beaches of summer are calling.  As you walk along the beach, keep your eyes open.  The ocean often washes up gifts that give the beachcomber a glimpse of something magical, something that connects one to the simplicity and wonder of childhood.