They were on the beach with the tide out. No way we could’ve dug for them underwater as the water would’ve filled the holes in before we got down deep enough. I recall the water was fairly shallow for a bit out but COLD!

Cool! The way they did it in RI (where the tides must have been less extreme) was to stand in cold water for as long as you could tolerate it, and dig into the unseen sand with a long-handled rake until it caught on something, then try to bring it to the surface to see what it was.

We looked for holes in the sand where they’d spouted water upwards.