Treasure on the Beach

Want shells? Go to Grand Turk. There's a place called the conch graveyard. It's where all the restaurants dump there shells after removing the conch. Literally thousands of them in heaps laying on the beach. Some are really cool and smooth after being rolled around for decades.

 

post of the week

 

Word, that is unacceptable. First offense = 3 days in the stocks, second offense = banishment at sea.

Those knobby whelk shells are great, I have one that's super orange inside.

 

As many times as we've been to Sanibel, we've never found it to be the shell collecting mecca that it is famous for. Probably just the wrong time of the year, tides, weather or whatever. Cool place nevertheless.

I totally agree that the gathering/killing of live shells is not cool if not illegal. Along the lines of killing elephants for their ivory or finning sharks, IMO. Sadly, if you go into shell or souvenir shops in most beach towns that's how many of those shells got there. And most of those shells originate in some exotic location half way around the world anyway.

 

Good on you Betty for educating others about our playground. I try to do the same thing when I can. Many people just don't know. In most cases it is illegal to take live shells in Florida especially for the casual tourist beachgoer type: http://myfwc.com/fishing/saltwater/recreational/sea-shells/ And even if it's not, it just messes with karma and our relationship with the ocean. She will provide as she sees fit.

 

treasure on the beach??? hmm when I was a little kid, maybe the 10 to 12 year old years I would go out at the crack of dawn on july 5th and find all the abandoned fireworks dropped/left on the beach from the night before... def seemed like a treasure find back then.

 

S Core Banks (the S end is where the Cape Lookout lighthouse is). If you go north from the lighthouse its wonderfully desolate and the shells are piled 6 inches deep and 20yds wide for miles since hardly anyone ever goes there.

 

I was checking waves after a big NorEaster and there were thousands of conchs. I took home a bag full only to bring them right back. They were alive. I apologized and toss them as far out as I could. I left their kin on the beach. It was god swill that those were chosen by a kind hearted sap like me.

 

Our family first visited Sanibel in summer '68. Although there were fairly large numbers and kinds of shells then, it was less even then that it had been in the past. Years later, in the 80s, when we started going back on a more regular basis, the shell count and variety was significantly less.

I seem to recall that back in 68, there were actually boat trips to collect living shells from the shallows in the bay. Also remember reading instructions on how to boil the living or dead animal out of the shell. There are laws now against collecting live shells, I gather. (pun intended)

The Shell Factory (is it still there?) back on the mainland, sold thousands of shells, sand dollars, sea biskets, sea urchins, starfish, coral, etc., from all parts of the globe, collected in the manner you described. Some even dyed, etched, cut, and glued into decorations or other worthless doo-dads. There were also dried blowfish, alligator parts, and other things of that nature. I stopped visiting places like that years ago. I certainly wouldn't buy anything there.