2 lightning whelks

The sight of two beautiful nine inch LIGHTNING WHELKS  laying in the path at your feet on your evening beach stroll would be very rare. That’s why I normally don’t find the big shells like Clark. You have to hunt for them in the water. Good thing I have Super Sheller Clark with his trusty shelling backhoe because he found this 8 1/2 inch and 9 1/2 inch in the water off West Gulf Drive beach access #6 by sloshing around in the water right where the waves were breaking on the beach.

Clark in the surf

Of course they weren’t laying there side by side but they were in an area pretty close together. I was up on the beach looking through a few shell piles when Clark came walking up to me with these two beauties in his backhoe.

shells in scoop

Whoa! Look at the color and size of those WHELKS. They are stunning!

whelk shells in sand

We shelled until dark and on our way back to the car, we saw that Bobby Jo from Sanibel found a big WHELK too!

Bobby Jo with whelk

Things are getting stirred up in the gulf after we had some outer weather bands coming from the north from Hurricane Irene and now we have Tropical Storm Lee in the north of the Gulf  Of Mexico. So the past few days have been feast or famine shelling. We went to this same spot the next day and there was nothing to be found. We were so happy we stopped by when we did and so is John from Virginia. Here’s a little video of what the shelling looked like in the water that evening.

PS- The video on my newest Panasonic DMC-ZS10 isn’t as user friendly as my old one so that’s why I haven’t take as many videos lately. Grrr- Rasher-frasher, I love making fun movies. I’m not sure why it kept blurring but at least you get to see all the shells rolling in, right?Clark shelling