You never know what you’ll find washed ashore on a beach, especially in the more remote parts of the Island, and especially in the off-season — maybe a message in a bottle from decades past, a rubber duck, or the occasional coconut floating north from the Caribbean.
In the case of a recent discovery on a Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank property, the mystery of what staff stumbled on earlier this month is ongoing.
Land Bank ecologist Julie Russell, while out on the Aquinnah side of the Squibnocket Pond Reservation, came across a circular metal object about three feet in diameter, similar-looking to a fictional spacecraft. At the time of the discovery, she contacted law enforcement to make sure it wasn’t an explosive. A State Police trooper, after trudging out to the site late at night (only to find the object was under water at high tide), confirmed through photographs that the object was not an unexploded piece of ordnance.
“My only other guess is that it’s an old mooring,” Russell said, or at least some kind of old nautical equipment. She is open to hearing any explanations for what it might be.
Part of Russell’s motive for passing along a photo of the object to The MV Times is to spread awareness around marine trash and how much of it there is out there. “I don’t think people really understand how much trash is in the water,” she said. “It’s like a bathtub that keeps filling up.”
Studies indicate that millions of metric tons of plastic waste makes its way into the ocean each year.
Send your guess to editor@mvtimes.com.
A turtle robot.
I’m thinking that’s the remains of a “Mushroom Mooring”.
A mushroom mooring anchor is a heavy, cast-iron anchor shaped like an upside-down mushroom, designed to embed in soft bottoms (mud/silt) to provide strong, permanent holding power for moorings or small boats, using suction and sand filling its bowl for stability, though it can struggle in storms or harder ground and is often seen as an older technology replaced by more reliable designs.
Key Features & Function
Shape: Resembles a mushroom cap with a stem, allowing it to sink and fill with sediment.
Material: Heavy cast iron for significant weight.
Best Use: Ideal for permanent moorings in protected waters with soft, muddy, or silty bottoms, where it digs in deeply.
How it Works: Sinks into the seabed, and waves/water fill its bowl with sand, creating suction that greatly increases holding power.
Downsides: Can drag in storms, may not reset well, and less effective in sand or clay; newer anchors often outperform them.
Visual Description
Imagine a heavy, metal object that looks like a large, inverted bowl with a pointed center stem, connected to a chain or rope system that leads up to a mooring buoy or a boat.
https://share.google/images/cI1jMfZXRavwQNp9U
Maybe I’m missing something?
Another theory, the object spent alot of time buried under ground judging by the cemented rocks on it.
It did not spend much time in the intertidel zone because its not worn from tumbling. I does not apear to have any marine growth, or the tell tale markes of old barnacle attachments. the shape is incorrect for mushroom anchor the stem is on the wrong side. it has what appears to be tabs on the edges where it was bolted to something else. pressure vessel cover? what ever it is, my guess came out of the bank from an old trash dump, think WW2 activities.
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