Chesapeake Bay Sea Glass
by Sue
(Carroll County, MD)
~ by Sue - Carroll County, MD
In my local newspaper today (1/17/12) there was an article about a young girl who collects sea glass and makes things with it.
She collects her sea glass mainly at Deal Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in the Chesapeake Bay (south of the bay bridge).
It even stated that this "secret" treasure of a place was announced on the Martha Stewart show so many people go there to collect sea glass, shards of pottery, pipe stems and other interesting finds.
It may be worth the trip.
Comment from David at Odyssey:
Thanks for the heads up, Sue!
We hesitate to post any reports without photos of the actual sea glass found, and generally do not add a report like this one which is based on an article by a person who likely knows very little about sea glass. However, many people have read the above-mentioned article or one similar to it and have believed what it said, so we would like to add a caveat or caution to reading such writeups.
It is true that some of the sea glass that Lin has collected over the years comes from the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, home of Lin's mother Win; in fact, the orange piece shown on our Home Page and other pages was found there.
On the other hand, our explorations of a number of beaches on the West Shore has turned up very little other sea glass worth keeping. This is a bay, so has very little wave action except where near the open ocean. You cannot expect to find well-tumbled beach glass on any of the beaches in a protected bay.
Yes, there definitely are occasional treasures found on the Chesapeake. But these are the rare exceptions.
Important - don't trust isolated reports that don't include photos of the sea glass found. What one person considers great sea glass may, in fact, be nothing but barely-beached and non-tumbled glass shards that have little or no value except as personal mementos of the beach trip. Map of Chesapeake Bay area:
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