One person’s trash is another’s treasure, and Bermuda’s sea glass beaches are treasure troves of our glass trash. Those gorgeous aqua pebbles are trash? Yup. They’re bottles either thrown overboard, spewed out by shipwrecks or, unfortunately, deliberately dumped.

Sea glass bits come in different colors, depending on what objects they originally were. The white, brown, and emerald pieces mostly come from beer bottles, while other colors (from black to blues to pinks and everything in between) come from other glass objects, like medicine and perfume bottles.

Listen closely and you’ll hear lovely music come out of sea glass as it tumbles about beach rocks. Combine that with the hurricane season and it can turn into a loud masterpiece!

Years of pounding hurricanes and shipwrecks along Bermuda’s 70 mile coastline have created not one, but two (yep) glass beaches.

Convicts Cemetery Beach (AKA Dockyard Beach) lies near an old Naval dump. Don’t take home sea glass from here or you’ll end up a convict yourself: it’s quite illegal. Building Bay Beach (AKA Alexandra Battery Beach) is guarded by an 1860s fort, which is free and open to the public. It’s called Building Bay because the ship Deliverance was built here in 1610 before making its way to Jamestown, Virginia.  This secluded and little-traveled beach, only a 15 minute walk from St. George, is sprinkled with sea glass and also has a cave to explore.

Pick up Bermudian sea glass and try to figure out its origin as you sip your Rum Swizzle.