This works in water and on land, it’s a good set up for anyone to use. The shovel that it comes with works great for digging, I think it would be handy to have some sort of sifter for working with the sand and water when it goes off. It takes a bit of fiddling to understand what you might find when here it beeping but it’s really exciting! This is an exciting device to have around, it doesn’t matter if it’s kids or adults around, everyone wants to see what happens when it beeps! I’m trying to see if it will detect gold bearing rocks because there is still gold in the creeks around here. I think that would be very cool. I haven’t been able to figure it out for sure, but I think it is working, I just need to verify