Archive for whelk egg casing
Seashells Painted With Stripes
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My earliest childhood memory of shelling is when I would get so excited to find COQUINAS. They look just like butterflies! Maybe that’s why I still love them so much now… but then, another thought would be… maybe because they are just so darn cute! The Sanibel Lighthouse Beach was loaded with COQUINAS yesterday evening. Just like being a kid again, I got really excited to find so many variations that look like they have had stripes painted on them. For me, it’s unusual to find this many striped ones all together. While I was picking up these cuties, I also found a few other minis like this KEYHOLE LIMPET…
These Wisconsin visitors were having a great time finding the minis and COQUINAS too…
Sweet collection…
While we were busy admiring the COQUINAS, these brand-new Fort Myers residents (Ron and Kelli!) found this huge awesome LIGHTNING WHELK…
Look at the color of the spire on this beautiful shell and this one looks like it has painted stripes too. Nature’s miracle and a spectacsheller find!
This mom and daughter shelling team from Orlando were loving the minis and the baby LIGHTNING WHELKS they found in the EGG CHAINS…
Right before the sun went down, I met Kim, Olivia and Zach….
Kim said she saw my post about the brown MACULATED BABY’S EARS last week from Cayo Costa, then found two of them! She said she would have had no idea what it was unless she hadn’t just read about it and saw the pics here. I love that! Here is the one she found last night near the fishing pier. This would have been so easy to mistake it for a SLIPPER SHELL while laying in the sand or mixed in with other shells, right? Wow! Great find!
But hold on, she also found this pretty little shell. I didn’t know what it was until my friend H.L. Schroeder (Lori -heehee- who knows a lot about land snails) identified is as a LINED TREE SNAIL.
It looks like an artist took a brush to a white snail shell and painted the lines on this one too. Just gorgeous. I know it’s rare to find one on the beach since this may be the first one I’ve seen in person but since it’s a land snail, I dont know if its rare on the whole island. Here’s the aperture side of it.
Okay… I’ve got to confess. Maybe you noticed, I didnt give names to some of the folks I met on the beach last night. I have so much happening in this little brain of mine so I have to take notes on my phone since I’m really bad on remembering names. Well, my phone was on overload and couldnt take any more data. I lost the names of these wonderful folks. Ack! I could tell you all about where they live, what they do, and all about our conversations but … names? Lost. Please, Cute Couple- “Well, not St Paul, MN but it’s so close, that’s where we normally tell people we are from”, and Exuberant Couple “We just moved to Ft Myers! Pam, is this a pretty normal find here? No? Waahhhoooooo!” and Mom “I’m mad at you when you don’t post every day- hahaha” and Daughter “We jump in the Avis car any chance we get to drive to Sanibel”…. y’all forgive me! Here is a CYBERSHELLING picture to make up for it. Click on the next image to blow it up to find all of you own shells!
Beach Bling Babes
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Now who in their right shelling mind could not think that this little baby LACE MUREX shell is not THE cutest thing that ever washed up at the Sanibel Lighthouse Beach? heehee What a cutie petutie!
I even found smaller baby shells in some of the LIGHTNING WHELK EGG CASES that have been washing up this week…
Most of the disks were empty but some of them still had tiny dried shells in them…
One was torn open so we could see the teeny tiny babies. They only look like grains of sand at this point… or honestly they remind of those little bits when eat corn on the cob. Errrr, Okay, I cant really explain that well so let’s move on and get back to the point… they are tiny LIGHTNING WHELKS!
I got to share these little WHELK EGG CHAINS with a couple of gals that came to visit us from Virginia Beach. Kathleen was a good friend of Clark’s over 40 years ago and they haven’t seen each other since. What a hoot to meet Kathleen and her friend Jan and to hear about “the old days” and to catch up on all of our mutual friends while walking the beach…. and to find out they both love shelling!!!
Today, I ran into Roma with a shell bag full of BLING!
I peeked at her “Bling Bag” and saw all of this…
Holy Crab! She loves BEACH BLING as much as I do! She was collecting all of these different CRAB claws and shells for her daughter who makes jewelry out of them. There is a HERMIT CRAB CLAW, STONE CRAB CLAWS, BLUE CRAB CLAWS and some LEOPARD BOX CRAB shells. Ha! Love it!
I found one more piece of cool BEACH BLING.. a MERMAID PURSE! Okay, it’s a SKATE EGG CASE but it sure is more fun to think of it as a MERMAID PURSE, right?
Oh, and I almost forgot to show you my fave shell today… A BROAD PAPER COCKLE. The colors on this sweetie are awwwwwesoooome…
PS- Shellers Unite! There are still a few spots left on the iLoveShelling cruise to Cayo Costa this Sunday the 17th from 9am to noon. Come join me and lots of other spectacsheller folks that love shelling! Call Captiva Cruises to book your shelling spot at 239-472-5300.
For more iLoveShelling Cruise dates and info on the Shellabaloo click on the next image…
Breaking The Case of Lightning Whelk Eggs
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I wasn’t able to enjoy the shelling while the super moon tides were at the lowest this weekend since I was tied up with other “stuff”. But high on the wrack line there are still so many LIGHTNING WHELK EGG CASES on the east end beaches of Sanibel.
Since I’ve been dissecting some of the BEACH BLING I’ve found over the last week (like the SEA WHIPS), I decided to go ahead and open up one of the dried out LIGHTNING WHELK EGG “disks”.
There are teeny tiny little LIGHTNING WHELK shells in some of the disks.
Isn’t that just a wonder? Talk about miniatures!
I didn’t find that many discs with baby WHELKS in them in this case because it looks like most of them “hatched” already. You can see a little round hole on top side of the discs… this is escape hatch! They use this when they are ready to explore their brave new world.
Just to show you how teeny tiny the WHELKS I popped out of the case were, I’ve added one of these little juvies in this Wheel of Whelks surrounding a penny.
PS-Since we didn’t get to shell the super moon tides, I thought I’d show you what Donnie and his girls found…. a GOLDEN OLIVE!
photo by Donnie Benton
He also sent a photo of all his goodies. Dang! I hate that I missed it.
photo by Donnie Benton
PSS- I’ve been on a researching binge lately so now I’ve broken another Sanibel mystery case wide open… stay tuned!
Sanibel Seashell Egg Casings
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It makes me so happy when Sanibel low tides are in the evenings. It’s my favorite time of day to walk the beach so low tide is such a bonus.
Finding this ALPHABET CONE was a double bonus! I found it right before dusk on the ledge of this little tidal pool near Donax Street beach access….
There were lots of PEN SHELLS, COCKLES, DOSINIAS and live seashells.
I met a first time sheller with all of these (unknowingly) live STARFISH in her bucket. She couldn’t believe she they were still alive since they felt stiff but was very happy to now know to put all SEA STARS back unless they are completely dry. We put them back in the water where they did a little happy dance and started crawling away.
There were so many EGG CASINGS strung all along the shore line.
Here’s a HORSE CONCH EGG CASING…
This is a WHELK EGG CASING…
I even found a SKATE EGG CASE….
An ANGEL WING! Clark found it completely in tact floating in the surf.
Jim (MO) found an old, pitted LIGHTNING WHELK full of character.
Sharon (GA) was collecting sea debris of SPONGES, a CRAB SHELL and a SEA URCHIN but she didn’t have a shell bag. She only had her aqua blue flip flops to carry them on. The perfect back drop!
Talk about a perfect back drop….. My Shelling Sistahs Linda, Anna and Jean in their cute tees with the full moon! This was monday night at the lighthouse where we were still finding lots of minis but not many bigger shells.
I was mesmerized by shellcrafter Jean’s orange bucket swinging against the reflection in the sand of the blue and pink splashed sky.
We went to the lighthouse again tonight but I haven’t loaded my photos yet but I gotta tell you, we found some nice shells. Double SUNRAY VENUS CLAMS, PAPER FIGS, CONCHS and much more…. photos and a video to come!
Sanibel Stoop
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Sanibel Stoop
Candy corn (baby horse conch)
There was lots of Sanibel stooping going on at West Gulf Drive around Casa Ybel Resort. We have some shell piles back and there some good shell to find in there. I found myself some candy corn. I could just eat up those little bright orange HORSE CONCHS! They are just the cutest. I saw the other day, that Tink from MyMobileAdventures calls them mac and cheese. Pretty yummy too!
More Sanibel stooping
Whelk egg casings
I could not believe how many WHELK EGG CASINGS there were on the beach. Every 5 steps there was another one…then another one….then another one. I’m not sure if that is bad news for WHELKS or just good news for good shelling in the next few days. Let’s hope for good shelling!
Feeding Frenzy
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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.
