Oct 9, 9:00 PM

Sea beans sprout a loyal following

Two-day event washes ashore in Cocoa Beach

By Billy Cox
floridatoday.com

If every scrap of flotsam strewn by the tides tells a story, these disparate -- and lately, portentous -- clues and fragments will be celebrated in Cocoa Beach this weekend in the eighth annual International Sea Bean Symposium. And if beachcombers united by debris from distant shores are convening to take a two-hour "snapshot" of what the future is becoming, they may also pause to remember the connection that drew them together in the first place.

Symposium schedule Where: Cocoa Beach Library, 55 N. Brevard Ave. Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.: Free public displays. 11 to 11:45 a.m.: "Beginners Beachwalking" slide show by Ed Perry. Saturday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.: Free public displays. 8 to 10 a.m.: Bean-A-Thon collection. 10:30 a.m. to noon: Judges tally Odd Bean entries. 4 p.m.: Presentation by Paul Mikkelsen. 5:30 to 7 p.m.: Dinner break. 7 p.m.: Bean-A-Thon contest awards, raffle. 7:45 to 8 p.m.: Keynote speaker Dr. David Cox, "The Magic of Mermaids' Purses." On the Net: www.seabean.com

Founded by Cathie Katz, the Melbourne Beach author/environmentalist who lost a battle with cancer in 2001, the Sea Bean Symposium will adhere to its usual traditions of speakers, exhibits and a Saturday morning scavenger hunt called the Bean-A-Thon. This year's highlight is a compelling new book that should be standard issue for anyone with even a casual interest in the botanical visitors being scattered across the Space Coast this time of year.

"Sea-Beans From the Tropics: A Collector's Guide to Sea-Beans and Other Tropical Drift on Atlantic Shores" (Krieger Publishing, $29.50) is Ed Perry's contribution to a growing public interest in the rain-forest and jungle seeds dispatched by natural forces to colonize foreign niches. Co-authored by the late John Dennis, "Sea-Beans" -- complete with detailed color photos -- provides scientific, historical and cultural context for more than 200 species of Latin American drift seeds not uncommon to, but often unnoticed on, local beaches.

Perry, who now edits Katz's newsletter, "The Drifting Seed," expects anywhere from 600 to 1,000 people to drop in on the symposium at Cocoa Beach Library, which culminates with a Saturday night lecture on mermaids' purses (skate eggs) by keynote speaker Dr. David Cox. "Kids love this stuff," Perry says. "The whole point is to educate, share ideas and have fun. It doesn't cost anything, and it's right here on our doorstep."

Perry's first encounters with sea beans were strictly mercenary. His grandmother, who ran the old Sea Bean Boutique on Canaveral Pier, paid him 25 cents apiece for every one he fetched so she could give them away to customers as novelties. A 1984 alumnus of Satellite High, Perry went on to become a Florida Park Service ranger at Sebastian Inlet after graduating from the University of Florida. But it wasn't until he read Cathie Katz's illustrated books, especially "The Nature of Florida's Beaches," that he began to look at the tidal debris in another light.

"I thought, 'Wow, I've got to meet this lady -- she's as crazy as I am, and she picks these things off the beach,' " recalls Perry.

Two years after meeting and being motivated by Katz at a 1996 symposium, Perry found himself collaborating with veteran ornithologist/botanist John Dennis, a likeminded biology detective who, in 1976, co-authored the subject's first comprehensive reference book, "World Guide to Tropical Drift Seeds and Fruits" with Bob Gunn. Dennis died in 2002, but their work was finished the year before.

"John was a really interesting guy who poured 86 years of knowledge into this book," says Perry. "He spent a lot of his time monitoring the beaches for oil pollution. But along the way, he became more interested in drift seeds. It's something you get addicted to."

And October is peak season for getting addicted.

Shedding onto flooded jungle floors during summer rainy seasons, dispersed to the sea with receding tides, swept north upon the Gulf Stream and making landfall in hurricane cycles, buoyant sea beans travel thousands of miles in impervious shells before spreading onto local shorelines, often in tangles of seaweed called wrack. As Katz says in Perry's book, "To visit Florida's beaches without noticing the wrack is like driving to Disney World to admire its parking lot."

Used throughout the ages for food, ornamentals, jewelry and talismans, sea beans are easily identified by size and coloration. Some have several names. A woody tropical vine known by academics as Entada gigas, for instance, produces a seed pod called the sea heart, or kidney bean. Others call the liver-colored seed -- its hard shell capable of making trans-Atlantic voyages for years -- the Columbus bean, since its non-European origins gave the Italian explorer additional suspicions about life on the far side of the ocean.

"They're castaways -- that's why so many get produced," Perry says. "But they're also one of nature's ingenious ways of perpetuating itself. Most of them can't survive in this climate even if they were to take root. But if there were an environmental change that turned out to be catastrophic, there'd be these seeds here, ready to step in and colonize."

The seeds are almost always viable. Once their shells are cracked or corroded, they're ready to go -- as Margie Mitchell learned recently, to her utter bewilderment.

Mitchell, a recent sea bean convert with an eclectic collection, is working her dream job, doing coastal cleanup for Cocoa Beach. A few weeks ago, she noticed an unusual vine snaking out of her potted spider plant. "It came from a hamburger bean that sprouted accidentally," she says. "The only thing I can figure is, a visiting child must have taken it from my collection and placed it back there."

The annual Bean-A-Thon is a good way for novices to get acquainted with these exotic visitors. From 8 to 10 a.m. Saturday, beachcombers are encouraged to scour the shoreline from Canaveral National Seashore to Sebastian Inlet and take their haul to the Cocoa Beach Library by 10:30 that morning. Judging for the Odd Bean contest gets under way at 5:30 p.m.

"It's like a one-day snapshot of Brevard, sort of like the bird counts they do in December," says Perry. "And not just beans. We want to get an idea of what sort of trash is out there, too."

Last year's somewhat sardonic trash theme was plastic piggy banks. Exactly where they came from was never determined, but they arrived on Brevard's shores in different colors and sizes. One had Spanish words that roughly translated to "Love is saving your money now."

"I joked that they came from the Bay of Pigs," says Perry. "But the grimmer possibility is that the ocean is the landfill for a lot of poorer countries. Plastics never go away. They just keep getting smaller and smaller until they become tiny parts of the food chain."

From the illegal dumping of bilge to tossing used pharmaceuticals, cut-rate opportunists continue to abuse the ocean with little fear of regulation. Perry spots a light stick at the high-tide line and picks it up. This device, he says, fastens to a bait hook for swordfish attracted to its luminescence.

"There are two chemicals in here," he says, turning the translucent tube on its end. "They tell us they're not harmful, but I don't know if I believe it. Last year I found over 800 of these things in a one-mile stretch of beach. It's not the fault of the captains who used them; I blame the guy who threw them overboard."

Right now, all eyes are keeping a sharp lookout for 29,000 Chinese-made rubber ducks that washed off a freighter in 1991 in the north Pacific. According to current-flow charts, some of the ducks are Florida bound. Other forms of drifting flotsam could actually be lucrative. September's "Drifting Seed" newsletter reports that a number of mahogany logs -- valued at up to $4,000 apiece -- were lost in the Mozambique Channel three years ago and could be heading for Florida's Gulf Stream.

But the most far-flung visitors to this weekend's Sea Bean Symposium -- Teruo and Izumi Hanno of Japan -- have already arrived. Izumi, who lives outside Tokyo, is a longtime beachcomber who belongs to the Japanese Driftlogical Society. Like Katz, she's an artist who produced her own book about everyday discoveries on Pacific beaches. Like Katz's "Little Larry" cartoon character who inhabited her artwork, Izumi also had her own cartoon character named "Mr. Sea Bean." This weekend's Symposium will feature T-shirts with images of "Little Larry" and "Mr. Sea Bean" dancing together.

"It's really strange how things work," Perry says. "The first year we didn't have Cathie with us, Izumi shows up. She found out about us on the Internet. It's been wonderful to have her here."

Adds fellow beachcomber Cecelia Abbott, "This is just another extension of Cathie's legacy. It just keeps growing."