Shell Seeker!


If you come to our home, you'll be greeted with shells as soon as you step in the door. You would be hard put to find a space where there isn't a bowl or jar of shells. As long as I can remember, I've collected shells. But since we've moved 38 times in 46 years, I've had to let all of them go. Except when we moved to the States after ten years in Ecuador, I brought home a Lightning Whelk from Ballenita on the coast of Ecuador. 

If you're a sheller, Anna Maria Island is a seashell paradise and I can't believe the treasures I've found, including a Junonia, Scotch Bonnets and Lion's Paw. But some of of my favorites are the alphabet cones, banded tulips, lightning whelks and pear whelks. And who can resist, scallop shells. My favorite color is the burnt orange, so I have an entire jar filled with them. 

And who can forget the almighty sand dollar. We often go to Whitney Beach where we can find as many was 120 sand dollars in two hours or just a handful; it all depends on the time of day. The best time to find sand dollars is early in the morning at low tide or low tide in the evening. And you have to get in the water to find some of the bigger ones, but we've found some of our larger ones right on the shore. 

Enjoy collecting shells in paradise! 

Until next time...






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fall on AMI

Image
People ask me all the time, "When is the best time to visit Anna Maria Island ?" Fall, of course! Today is the first day of fall and the temps have dropped into the high 80's! Smile. The water is warm and calm; the tourists have gone; the snowbirds aren't back yet and so we have the island to ourselves. Now until the second week of October we can reclaim our space and enjoy the beach without the crowds.  Our favorite beach is actually just over the bridge from Coquina Beach; it's Whitney Beach on Longboat Key . There are many public beaches on Longboat Key and I'll be discussing all of them in future posts, but this one is our favorite because of the shelling, no crowds (ever) and it's basically like a deserted "island." This summer it underwent beach restoration, which actually made it bigger and longer. No more Beer Can Island . Its peninsula now looks like Bean Point on AMI ; you can see sunrise and sunset. The other half of the island rem
Read more

Egg Shell Casings

Image
I'm fascinated by egg shell casings. For the longest time, I had no idea what I was looking at. Was it seaweed? Was it a sea sponge? Nope. They were egg casings. Hundreds of shells come from these eggs. My favorite is the horse conch (far left) -- the national shell of Florida. The egg casing resembles a little trumpet, just like the shell. And the prettiest is the banded tulip egg casing; they look like tiny bouquets of flowers -- just like the delicate shells they produce. The apple murex took me the longest to figure out because I thought it was a sea sponge for the longest time. Finally, I investigated it further and was surprised that it was an apple murex egg casing.  The egg casing that is most common is the lightning whelk (far right). Sometimes I find them as long as three feet. Can you imagine how many eggs it produces? Each capsule contains approximately 0-99 eggs and most strings contain 40 to 160 capsules. So what should you do when you find one washed up on shore? If
Read more

National Seashell Day - June 21, 2022

Image
How appropriate that National Seashell Day falls on the first day of summer. Let the fun begin! We're definitely making up for last summer when red tide hit Anna Maria Island and dead fish lined the shores. It was awful. I call it the summer that wasn't. So, this year we are in our glory. We've found so many sand dollars, we started an Etsy Shop ( Florida Sand Dollars US ).  And yesterday, while my hubby, Mark, was diving for sand dollars, I was combing the beach for shells and I found two of my favorites: a baby's ear and a bay scallop in my favorite color -- terracotta. The water temp was 90 degrees and it was so calm and clear.  Living where others vacation can sometimes be a blessing and a curse. Traffic is now going to start picking up as the official start of summer begins, but we always find ways around that problem by timing our trips to the beach.  It's also time for the mama turtles to start laying their eggs, so a lot is going on. If you're fortunate
Read more