Detecting at the back of the beach

Here is a photo from my last trip to a Treasure Coast beach,  an area just south of a known Spanish shipwreck from the mid 1600s.  

The lower beach was sanded in, but I still saw several people robotically searching along the lower beach despite the obviously poor lower beach hunting conditions. 
Many beach hunters ignore the upper beach, even when the lower beach is really sanded in. 
People who consider themselves wet sanders or shallow water hunters, find it hard to do anything other than search the areas they have become accustomed to repeatably searching over and over again. 
On narrow beaches you can often find signs of previous sand erosion, or areas at the back of the beach where dune lines have collapsed creating mini land slides. 
An alternative method of searching at the back of the beach, is to sweep your search coil vertically along the face of the cut or dune. 
I recovered these interesting old finds using this method along this eroded section of beach, probably lead buck shot / musket balls and tunic button from the Spanish shipwreck.

The iron ship spike was also found close to the 1600s Spanish shipwreck site,  it would have probably been rejected by other beach hunters using discrimination or iron rejection.

I day dream when I search along the vertical walls of eroded dune lines, thinking about finding a pile of pieces of eight put at the back of the beach for safe keeping hundreds of years ago. 
Hopefully one day that will happen to me, my Treasure Coast beach hunting strategy relies heavily on being persistent and searching places other beach hunters ignore. 
When metal detecting along the face of dune walls or dune fallout areas, use a small search coil and use little or no discrimination.
Look for changes in the color of the sand, you can often see different layers of sand that date the beach. 
Old compacted shell lines and layers of black sand towards the bottom of the dune face should always be investigated. 
Older finds will come from these layers of sand, some of my best Spanish treasure finds have come from deeper and older layers of sand. 
Thinking outside the box only helped me to recover lead, copper and iron, but one day it could help you to recover gold and silver. 

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