Sea Shell Heaven!

I LOVE SEA SHELLS!

There, I said it. They say the first step in overcoming an addiction is admitting you have a problem. Unfortunately, I don't see my hobby for finding sea shells as a problem. It's a challenge and it's fun!

Tom thinks my hobby is an obsession and a compulsion. I say he's not a professional and shouldn't throw those words around without a medical license.

My shelling hobby started when I was a little girl hunting shells with my grandfather on the beaches of Massachusetts. I would come home to Ohio every summer with bags of sharks eyes (snail shells) and clam shells. (I also remember the horror of my Mom and Dad selling said shell collection at a garage sale! How could they sell my treasures for $1 so some guy could decorate his fish tank?! But that's another story.)

What I am most excited to report is that I have finally hooked my kids on shelling too! Finally! It helps when you find really cool stuff. It almost brought tears to my eyes to hear Andrew say, "Look how beautiful that one is, Mommy!" or Kaitlyn yell, "Mommy come see what I found!"

One morning at low tide, we walked down the beach and waded over to a sand bar. We found some really big whelks, Florida fighting conchs, horseshoe crabs, hermit crabs, brittle stars, sand dollars, jelly fish, a sea cucumber and a small octopus!

I didn't take the camera with me on this bountiful trip but here are some shots of the things we found right before we left FMB:

Kelly holding a large whelk shell with mollusk inside.

Kaitlyn holds a sea star.

Andrew and a horseshoe crab.

Say "Hello" to my little friend.

Fish. The other white meat.

The kids learned that we couldn't keep any shell that had living thing in it. So most of the really big shells and all of the sand dollars had to be returned to the ocean. We always tried to put them in deeper water so no one else would try to take them (not everyone adheres to our "no kill" philosophy). 

Kaitlyn said it was like we were rescuing the animals. The kids also picked up any trash we found. They really are good kids. :-)

The only down side to shelling for 5 days straight...SRI's.  For you novices out there, new to the shelling community, an SRI is a "Shelling Related Injury".

I suffered two SRI's at Fort Myers Beach . I stepped on a shell on the dead center of my heel and thought I was going to pass out from the pain shooting up my leg. Just a deep bruise. I shook it off and continued on.

The other is a common problem due to shelling. You quickly find out that walking around with your head down for five days, your neck and shoulders start to hurt. Like any other serious athlete, sometimes you just have to suck it up and play through the pain.

You never know when that next big shell might be right there for the plucking, right?