captiva shelling october

The islands get happy. The strong winds and rain that belted the islands the past few days are paying off with seashells! The shells are rolling in and piling up all along the beaches of Captiva.  The first person I saw this morning was Michelle from Toronto with her 2 huge LIGHTNING WHELKS…

michelle toronto

 Look at this huge ALPHABET CONE and KING’S CROWN in her shell jug….

michelle's shell jug

Then I heard a “Woohoo!” from somebody. It was Lois from PA …

louis pa scotch bonnet

 with a perfectly beautiful SCOTCH BONNET in her hand…

scotch bonnet lois bonnet lois

 Okay, this is really cool. Get this….She told me she has been shelling for 40 years and that she has kept a life list of shells she has found. She has 347 different types of shells on her life list. You hear that yall? You can start counting your shell finds to have a shell life list of your own if you want.

scotch bonnet

 Charity from Ohio was finding lots of WHELKS…

Charity with whelk captiva

 Get a load of this big honkin chunk-a CORAL she found too…

chunk of coral captiva

Joyce from Long Island, NY shows us her FLORIDA CONE and big shell bag filled with goodies.

joyce Long island shell bag

 Look at Loretta from Texas with her great piece of WORM ROCK (and her cutie iLoveShelling hat!!!) …

beach after storm 10-20-11 025

photo by Diana Taylor

I saw great shells along every stretch of beach on Captiva today and heard that someone found a nice size LION’S PAW right in front of Captiva Island Yacht Club. I also heard the Sanibel was rocking too!

Captiva shells October

I haven’t even gone through all of my photos or much less taken photos of my own finds from today but I will hopefully get to that tomorrow….if I’m not too busy finding new treasures! Enjoy the shelling whether you are on the coast or doing a little fun cybershelling.

Captiva seashells october 2011