Sea Beans: Ocean Drifters on Florida Beaches

Sea beans are seeds and fruits from tropical plants that fall into rivers, drift out to sea and float — sometimes for years and thousands of miles — before washing up. Finding one is a small piece of evidence about ocean currents.

What they are

Most drift seeds have a hard, buoyant shell that survives long immersion. They come from vines and trees in Central and South America, the Caribbean and West Africa, and they arrive in Florida on the current systems that sweep past the state. Common finds include large flattened seeds, round nut-like seeds and light woody fruits, usually brown, polished by the water and often surprisingly heavy for their size.

When they arrive

Sea beans are light and float, so wind rules. Sustained onshore wind stacks them into the wrack line, and a few days of it will do more than a month of calm. The days after a strong onshore blow are the classic window. Winter and spring wind patterns tend to be more productive on the Atlantic side.

Where to look

High in the wrack, tangled into the seaweed and seagrass rather than sitting cleanly on sand. Pull the wrack apart with a stick or your foot and look underneath it. Beaches that collect a lot of drifting weed collect a lot of beans; beaches that are groomed daily usually do not, because the wrack is removed.

Identifying what you found

Start with shape, size and surface. A rounded, dark, glossy seed with a distinct band around it is a very different thing from a flat, woody, disc-shaped one. Photograph the whole seed with something for scale, and photograph any hole, scar or seam — those details drive identification.

Care

Rinse the salt off in fresh water and let the seed dry slowly. Many sea beans polish up with handling alone. Collecting drift seeds does not remove living material from the beach, but the general rules still apply: check the rules for the site, and leave the wrack line itself intact enough to keep doing its job.