Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Dredging a pond

Sunil
The dredge was used to pick up lost jewelery which is in the sand just offshore in the surf line. Alot of people loose jewelery at the beach, I guess a combination of suntan oil and water helps. The surf action on the beach, over time deposits all of the denser materials, jewelery, small stones, and garnet sand, in a line parallel to the beach. By using an underwater metal detector you find the line the pieces lie in and suck them up with the dredge. The sand and small stuff falls back to the bottom and the jewelery and rocks and stones are retained in a screen. The trick is to do it on a dead calm day when there is no surf to toss the floating dredge around. We usually did it after the summer busy season when the beach was empty in october or november. There were 4 public beaches on Long Island we hit every year for about 6 years running and the least we ever recovered was just under 7 ounces of jewelery. Most of it was 14 karat so at todays prices that's $1800. The most we ever recovered was a bit over 15 ounces. These totals were from hitting all the beaches we dove in the fall, usually 4 spots. There were also some diamonds the biggest was just a shade over 1 carat. (my dive buddy did the dumbest thing I could imagine with that diamond, he had it set and used it as a wedding ring. can't help but think that if we didn't find that ring, he wouldn't have done it. it only lasted for a year and a half.) There are divers using these dredges, they are called 'coin dredges', to recover jewelery and civil war musket balls in lakes all over the south. At least the guy who wrote the book I bought when I bought the dredge claimed it to be worth doing. My experience seems to reinforce that claim.