‘Every person has their luck’: Morocco’s beach metal detectorists

Agadir, Morocco – Mustapha Harmouch moves slowly across the sand at Agadir’s Corniche, sweeping his metal detector in low, even arcs. He tunes out the surfers paddling beyond the shore, the children shrieking in the waves and the chatter of families, all his attention is on one sound: the beep that means the coil has passed over something buried beneath the sand. For the 33-year-old content creator, that uncertainty is the whole appeal.

The detector does not distinguish between treasure and rubbish, it gives the same signal whether the object below is a coin, a ring, a discarded piece of aluminium, or an old piece of fishing equipment. Harmouch bought a Tianxun TX 850 metal detector online about four years ago. What began as a hobby has since become an occasional part of the videos he posts on Stofishing, a YouTube travel and spearfishing channel with roughly 123,000 subscribers.

“It’s a nice hobby because it’s the kind of exploration where I find something and learn something new,” he said.