Dennis Kovach holds a piece of beach glass found at Conger Beach.(Photo: Bob Gross, Times Herald)Buy Photo

Brian Martin was working on a personal watercraft lift when he saw something white and shining in the surf of Lake Huron.

"It thought it was either a skull or a fossil," said Martin, of Fort Gratiot.

He said it took him four tries to snatch what turned out tobe a chunkof coral about the size of a softball from the lake's grip.

"I looked like an old woman or a sandpiper running up and down the beach," he said.

That was on Wednesday, when strong north winds piled upthe waves on the Michigan shoreline of the big lake.

Brian Martin found a highly detailed fossil that washed up on a Lake Huron beach.(Photo: Courtesy of Brian Martin)

People were out on Thursday looking for what the water had deposited on the beach.

"Everyone on the beach looks for glass and Petoskey stones and such," said Dennis Kovach, of Port Huron.

He said he's not an avid collector of beach glass and fossils, but he keeps his eyes open during his daily strolls at Conger Beach.

"Everybody that's on the beach here is looking," Kovach said. "It's amazing at how much of the stuff they find."

Beach glass consists of pieces of old bottles and other containers. The pounding surf polishes away the rough and jagged edges, leaving pebble-sized pieces with a frosted surface.

"Some of the people make jewelry out of the glass," Kovach said.

People also find Petoskey stones. The stones are fragments of coral deposited during the Devonian period, which ended about 390 million years ago.

Dennis Kovach looks for beach glass and Petoskey stones at Conger Beach.(Photo: Bob Gross, Times Herald)

Ann Troy also was walking the shoreline at Conger Beach on Thursday.

"It's the best time to find it, after the north wind stops blowing and before the summer people come," she said.

She said she finds beach glass and Petoskey stones.

"Sometimes I put it in jars with candles," she said. "I make jewelry sometimes.

"Sometimes it just sits."

Troy said she walks the beach several times a week.

Pirate gold isn't the only buried treasure. After a north wind, people hit the beaches to see what the waves have deposited. Bob Gross, Times Herald

"It is fun," she said.

Kovach said it's surprising what he and other people find on the beach.

"People that I've met, they have what they identify as the bottom of a Coke bottle," he said.

Beach glass, however, seems to be less common as plastic containers replace glass bottles, he said.

Martin marveled that the coral fossil he found had been formed when Michigan was covered by a shallow sea.

"It just walked itself up out of the lake, and I was lucky enough to find it," he said.

Contact Bob Gross at (810) 989-6263 or rgross@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobertGross477.

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North wind deposits treasures on Lake Huron beaches - Port Huron Times Herald