Glass Balls/Japanese Floats

Dear Friends, Family, & Readers:

     I hope that life is finding you well. This blog is about a hobby common to the Pacific Islands, whether it be Guam, Saipan, or any of the other Marianas Islands.   The topic is that of searching for glass balls while beach combing.  If I had more time on Saipan, I would search for more glass balls as there are still places on the island that are virtually inaccessible to humans unless they have a background in climbing and repelling by rope.   I have seen such areas and expect there to be many glass balls yet to be found there, but they are becoming rare.  In the 70’s one could find more glass balls, but they are no longer made today or at least not for fishing as was their original purpose. 

     Glass balls come from Japan and were originally used as net floats.  A great website for both pictorial amusement and research is http://home.comcast.net/~4miller/aboutfloats/about.html .  Amongst my friends on the island, the place code named “Lobster Lagoon” that proved to be a place to still occasionally find glass floats earlier this year.  The chances of finding them at this location, however, have diminished as there is a house located above the trail head that has its own private trail leading down to the crevice.  During a heavy storm or typhoon I’m sure that this family would be the first on the scene to find such beauties. 

     I will not share this location with anyone because it is a secret to be earned from many days of hiking and exploring the island.  One of my regrets about Saipan is that I did not make friends that shared the love of exploring and trailblazing that I have.  The longest I had ever spent in the jungle was 6 hrs and I nearly didn’t make it back due to exhaustion.  It would have been nice to have a friend to explore the jungle and beach comb with.  I could have headed up a group at church, but I didn’t feel that the interest was there.  I wish everyone the best of luck in finding these beauties on Saipan and other islands in the Marianas chain.

This glass ball was given to me by a friend on the island of Saipan.  You can see that the original roping is still attached. At first, I had the idea that I would try and get rid of the added sea grunge, but I figured that it was a lost cause.  I even thought about bleaching the rope, but I figured that it might weaken the rope and lead to it fallen apart.  What I will say about cleaning a glass ball is that soaking it in non-bleach or non-corrosive dish soap for a few days and lightly scrubbing the glass with a steel wool sort of scour dish pad will take off a little bit of junk off of the glass. 

This glass ball is one I found at Lobster Lagoon.  It is smaller a a little cleaner than the big one that was given to me.  An important thing to know about glass balls that many people make the mistake of doing is in regard to a shipment of these objects back home.  The truth is that you cannot ship these objects by air.  Because glass floats are sealed glass blown objects, they cannot be flown by plane.  When the air pressure changes, the glass floats will break. So, DO NOT SHIP THESE HOME BY PLANE.  Instead, ship the glass floats by parcel post while wrapped in a lot of bubble wrap.  The parcel post will be a lot slower than shipping by plane because it is shipped by boat, but at least your beach combed treasure will be safe.

This picture was taken at Jeff's Seaside Museum in Guam.  The museum is attached to the restaurant located on the south side of the island named Jeff's Pirates Cove.  I did not care too much for the food, but the museum is worth visiting despite its extremely small size.  It is actually the size of a shack, but is filled with lots of beach combed material and Guam WWII era treasures.

This is a the row of glass balls in the lower glass shelf at the museum in Guam.  I'm not sure if this is true, but I have a hunch that the glass balls were originally made from melted down glass sake bottles from WWII.   In Japan today, One can still find glass floats but many of them are actually made just for tourists or enthusiasts.