The ocean stirs the heart, inspires the imagination and brings eternal joy to the soul.
Robert Wyland
Feeling a tad sad today. Three days left in our beach house in Gulf Shores. How I’ll miss my favourite pastime: relaxing on the deck while gazing at the water, with the wind in my face, and the rays of the sun on my face.
The owners aren’t renting to snowbirds in March so on Thursday we move to a condo in Orange Beach. Lovely condo. But sadly not right on the beach.
So today I’m sharing some joys of beach life.
On the deck I sit
Enwrapped by sun, wind, and waves
Filled with gratitude
The beach is an array of treasures.
At home (Prince Edward Island) we’re always finding bits of sea glass on our beach walks. https://seaglassing.ca/findseaglass.html
But never down here. Until this year. And what we found here we’d never collect at home. Not smooth. Or as I’ve heard people from home say “Not baked enough.” But since it was so rare to see any here we collected it so I could show you. Another anomaly is we never see stones on the beach here but we actually found a few this year. Maybe we found these due to the beach restoration that took place this winter. If you’re interested here’s some links regarding the restoration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTZ9aprSRY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP6FBTT7J5k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLVcG1heXOQ
These are my magnificent sea glass and stones. Really more surprising than magnificent.
At the Gulf Shores Information Centre, like all information centres, they have numerous brochures/pamphlets. Interesting. Richard saw a shell brochure and thus sprung our beach project – find the shells shown in the brochure. Also at this centre, if you ask, they will give you a shelling bag.
What a fun project. Almost like a puzzle. Lucky Beans were the only ones we couldn’t find. I’ve heard they’re very difficult to find. Something I learned from our friends Joanne and Jeanne is the older the shell the darker it is. That’s why some of our shells are darker than the brochure pictures.
Of course there are many more shells. Here are a few others that we liked.
At the top: Two heart shaped pieces of sand dollars
Second row: Four Cat’s Paws
Third row: I like to think the letter V is etched into them
Fourth row: These are iridescent.
Bottom: Coral, two shells joined together, and a etched shell that we nicknamed our turtle shell.
The two large ones: i don’t know what they are but we liked them. We were told the large one on the left is difficult to find. Yay. Score one for us.
I gathered the next shells because they all had small, round holes at the top. Why the holes? Again our friends to the rescue.
Within the snail’s mouth is a hard, tongue-like structure called a radula. It is like a small file or rasp covered with tiny sharp teeth-like structures. With its radula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radula the Moon Snail drills a perfectly round, small hole through the bivalve’s shell (and that is the hole you see).
That got me searching and I found this online.
.., when moonsnail species drill holes into their prey, there is the sunken / bevelled edge you see here. Notice too how the hole is almost always near the “umbo” of their prey’s shell (highest part). That’s also a clue that the predator was a moonsnail species, not a whelk species…
https://themarinedetective.com/tag/moonsnail/
From Washington State’s Department of Ecology: “The average moonsnail takedown lasting 4 days as it drills ½ mm per day. In order to speed things up a bit, the moonsnail produces hydrochloric acid and other enzymes to help dissolve the shell and liquefy the clam’s insides . . . Once a perfectly rounded hole is made in the shell, the moon snail inserts its tubular, straw-like mouth and slurps up the “clam smoothie” inside. It can take another day or so for the moon snail to ingest the clam innards. Talk about delayed gratification!”
Nature is amazing.
Gulf Coast Girl – Caroline Jones – ft. Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Chesney, Lukas Nelson & Mac McAnally
Take care and stay healthy.
As always, thanks for your interest and thank you for reading.
I invite you to click Follow or Subscribe to receive timely updates, Like to show your love and support, Share my post on your social media site, and /or Comment here.
Debi's Junket Journal 