Sea glass, Ocean, Fire glass....

Do you know what Sea Glass is?

Sea glass is glass that has been thrown into the sea years ago (at Fort Bragg, about 40 years ago).  The pieces of glass got smoothened out by the sea and got polished by the sand.  It eventually comes to the shore and allows people to pick it up. 

-Sharko

We were at Fort Bragg and its known for its beautiful glass beaches.  There are atleast 3 beaches where you find sea glass.  There is one "original" beach that is in MacKerricher state park where its illegal to collect any seaglass.  Just outside the state park, there is another site where there is abundant sea glass.  These pictures are from that second site.  Apparantly there is a third location which is accessible by only kayaks where you can find sea glass.  

The story of Sea glass is quite fascinating.  It also shows how Mother Nature can turn something ugly and unwanted into something we go searching for and consider it precious!

About 40 years ago or so, the ocean and beach in Fort Bragg was used as a dump site to discard, glass, appliances and apparently even cars!.   Sometimes they used to set the garbage on fires to reduce the size of it.  In the later years, there were lot of clean up programs to remove most of the debris but glass pieces stayed.  Nature already started its charm even on the thrown away glass.  The waves and sand together polished and smoothened the glass pieces and now they became nature's treasure again.  There's a tiny clip of water washing over the sea glass at the end of this blog.  Watch it and imagine that happening for 40 years constantly and you will appreciate what Nature can do!!

Sea glass is found almost everywhere there is an ocean (and the glass pieces you find near rivers is called 'beach glass').  In general, red, blue, lavender, purple or pink colored sea glass are rare as there aren't many containers with those colors.  White, Brown and some of the greens are common (sources being beer bottles etc).

And when they had fires (on purpose) like in Fort Bragg, the glass melts and sometimes have inclusions in them before becoming smooth pebbles and they are called 'Fire glass' and is even rarer to find them.





We dont know what affects the dump had on the marine life all those years ago but right now, the Glass beach in Fort Bragg is teeming with life.  We saw lot of tide pools with marine creatures like crabs, purple snails, small fishes and lot more. 

In Sharko's words "A tide pool is a pool that's filled with water caused by tides!  The tides fill the puddle.  Things live there like crabs, fishes and white worms."









Next time you are visiting a beach (ocean or river) that you know was used as a dump site, take a walk and see what shiny treasures you can find....

There's a talk going on in Fort Bragg about replenishing the glass by throwing discarded glass into the ocean.

Here's a small video of how it all happens...