King's Crown ate a crab

This KING’S CROWN had a feast for lunch! Do you think he ate the claw too? I’m sure he did! He already ate the rest of the shell (?). These are the rest of the pictures from Easter but I was way too excited to blog about anything else but my big find of the 12″ WHELK. Sorry, you’ll probably get sick of me talking about that 12″ WHELK (heehee) so I’ll try to keep focused…..because these pictures are really cool!

Horse Conch seashell eats Lighning whelk

Isn’t this wild???  We saw many live shells that were eating other seashell species. They are so powerful that they just suck that other mullosk right out of their shell.

Horse Conch seashell lunches on whelk

This is how shallow the water was that he was found (and released) with his lunch.

Horse conch and king's crown

When you look into the shallow rippling water, some times you can’t really decipher what it is that you are about to pick up. Clark picked up this HORSE CONCH and this KING’S CROWN came with him. The HORSE CONCH had just sucked out the KING’S CROWN mullosk and spit the empty shell into Clark’s hand. Unbelievable.

Whelk egg casing in shallow water

I hope you can see what’s in this picture. It’s a very long and winding WHELK EGG CASING that looks like something from outer space. It looked like one end of this was dug into the sand. I’ve never seen a WHELK “birth” one of these casing so I’m not sure if they (she?) are under the sand when they do it or not. I wasn’t about to tug on it to find out. Remember, I’m far from a scientist and I don’t even play one on TV. ;)

Bright orange Horse conch

We ended up bringing home 13 KING’S CROWNS, a bunch of WORM SHELLS, a bright orange HORSE CONCH and of course, A TWELVE INCH WHELK.