Winter weather exposes some old stuff at the coasts, and some mysterious tar balls, hundreds of them, appearing on beaches in Marin -- with a large number on Limantour Beach at Point Reyes. Apparently this has happened before, and the source may be some old shipwreck getting stirred up at the bottom of the ocean. As the Marin Independent Journal explains, some tar balls showing up as late as ten years ago were believed to be coming from a 1953 shipwreck, the S.S. Jacob Luckenbach, a freighter that sank with up to 450,000 gallons of oil in/on it. A $19 million cleanup effort in 2002 made an effort to remove remaining oil from the freighter, which was still being blamed for harming local wildlife. "There are hundreds of shipwrecks out there," says a spokesman for the Point Reyes National Seashore.

And in other news, a wooden boat from the late 1800s called the King Phillip, which makes occasional appearances from beneath the sand on Ocean Beach, has emerged again. You're not allowed to touch it, but you can go walk around it and shoot some pictures.

Photo: NBC Bay Area