Boom Shellalaka! Shelby found a SCOTCH BONNET on Sanibel’s Lighthouse Beach.
It’s abshellutely gorgeous. (Her name should be spelled Shellby! heehee)
After 5 days of a non-stop rain storm, there were lots of shells rolling in with every tide in this little stretch of the beach. (You can see the Sanibel causeway in the background)
Debi (she’s now a volunteer Shell Museum shell ambassador :) ) along with her friends Eden, Wendy and Ansley found an unbelievable, very rare piece of beach bling.
They said they found something they couldn’t identify then showed me this spectacsheller beach find. I took one look then my jaw dropped … Holy Cowrie! It was the most brilliantly colored MOLLUSK EGG CASE cluster I’ve ever seen. It’s the first time I had seen this particular egg so it puzzled me but I kept thinking it’s got to be in the MUREX family. Maybe a CABRITS MUREX? It was no longer viable being washed up on the beach so I encouraged them to take it to the Shell Museum for Dr Leal to identify. They did!
This is a colony of ROCK SNAIL (Stramonita floridana) EGG CASES attached to a PEN SHELL. Dr Leal has never seen such a large group of these eggs before so he was thrilled to have it in the museum collection. This photo is not filtered or touched up or any coloring added to it…. it was truly soooo amazingly colorful. Look at those purples…
Can you see the turquoise color in the egg cases in this one? It looks like paint brush bristles dipped in my favorite paint colors! Its a shelleidoscope of colors!
On Big Hickory beach, Diane found a JUNONIA! Congrats Diane…. Shellzam!
Okay yall, if you missed it…. I have exciting news. I’ve published a book! It’s hot of the press and Ive just gotten it into some of the local stores retailing for $12.99 at Congress Jewelers, Suncatcher’s Dream, MacIntosh Books, Captiva Cruises, Pelican’s Roost, our Sanibel CVS and in the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum.
More fabshellous news… I’m doing a book signing on National Seashell Day at the Shell Museum on June 21 from 12:30 to 1:30.
Come hang out with us!
Wanna see a preview? Or buy a copy online? CLICK HERE
