Night shelling. Finding shells on Sanibel in the dark.

[Music] [Applause] Yes, that is a 200 a.m. alarm that I set. And no, I'm not traveling across the state. I'm merely traveling to Santael, which has been a real challenge because late winter is one of our busiest times of the year down here, and the construction that is ongoing on the causeway has really made getting to that island a struggle. Now, what normally would take me 24 minutes lately has been taking me almost an hour. So, I decided I would beat the traffic, give up my beauty sleep so I could creep around the beach in the dark. Yes, that's just the kind of gal I am. So, it is 2:56 in the morning. Now, I did come hoping to catch low tide. And does it matter? Well, that's one of those things that I'm hoping to find out first off. So, at first I'm going to look for anything lumpy, anything big, just to see. Hopefully, it's a seashell. Now, there are definitely it. This looks kind of like a windswept beach. Here's a paper fig. Fantastic. All right. And it's whole level. Those are they feel very delicate, those paper figs. So, that's just one of the That's great. Good. Good sign. Hopefully, there'll be more of those. I'm really kind of curious what's going to happen down by the water. Haha. You know what? Not much of anything. I can't really see. It's really, really dark. You can't see into the water. So, I don't think I'm going to be doing all that much shelling in the water, but we're just going to have to see how everything kind of plays out. I've never done this before, but I am not a stranger to beachcombing. So, even though I'm not going to have the sun to help me, I know a little bit where to look and I probably will do okay and end up finding a couple of seashells. Now, the fun thing is is this is going to be different for me. So, I am going to get to find things I don't normally find. And I'm going to make an exception and show you some dead things that I don't normally do. And there is going to be some big lumps. Is it going to be anything I want to take home? Well, we're just going to have to find out. So, if you're ready to see what's out there for us today, let's go to the beach. [Music] [Applause] [Music] So to reiterate, I am on Santael. Not that we can see. This could be any old beach, but I'm here on Santael. And here is another paper fig. And when I think of Santael, I do often think of those paper figs. Now, in the background tonight, we may see a lot of these. This is a disc docemia. Looks like somebody snacked on it. So, those little white shells, well, they're not that little, but the white shells that you kind of see in the distance or if I pan across the beach, just so you know what they are. They're relatively common, so I likely won't go collecting many of them because they really are kind of here all the time. So, do you see a bunch of those? Oh, know what else I see? No, shut the front door. All right, so that is a true tulip. That is truly awesome. Oh my gosh, it's beautiful. Oh, you're so pretty. All right, so that's kind of what I'm hoping for. That's a good reason to be here in the dark. All right, so didn't get it in the water. Didn't get in the rack line. So, it's kind of like somewhere in between. And uh just to uh do a check. Yep. Yep. I literally have the beach to myself. I would really hope so. It's like 3:00 in the morning. So, that's the other thing. Like, if you're shelling with other people, you kind of feel rushed sometimes. So, this is another true tulip. It is not quite as spectacular as that other one I picked up. This one looks a little bleached out, but it's intact. So, for all intent and purposes, right, the aperture has a little bit it's a little bit broken, but that's a great shell, too. That is another true tulip. All right. Calico scallop. Terrific. At least something with some color on it. Lovely. That's one of the few scallops we get down here. A calico scallop. Okay. And a banded tulip. The sinkura hunteria. So, it's a scientific name for the banded tulip. There's three different shells I would like to learn the scientific names for. And so I will be repeating them so that I can learn it and you can learn it. So that is a lightning welk. The sinestra fulgar sinestrm. Yes I that I think might be my new favorite scientific name. So it is a lightning welk. It is special because the opening is on the left side is considered a sinestral shell. Unlike the apple murix which is the phonotus pom that opening is on the right like most of the other gastropods that we will find. So that's it. It's only the banded tulip, the apple mir, and the lightning welk. Those are the three scientific names I'm kind of really leaning into for now. Okay. Egg casings. So those little lumps there, those are egg casings. Oh, and there's a lot of them. They appear to be lightning. Yeah, they're lightning. welk egg casings. They look just like the parowalks. The parow welks are a little bit smaller. It's a little more delicate of a creature. So, their egg casings are a little bit smaller. Now, it does happen where I find things on the beach that are deceased. I don't I do normally record them. I don't normally share them. This is a deceased angel wing. And just because it is almost impossible to see them alive, I'm going to go ahead and show you what it looks like when it is dead. Now, the different thing about the angel wing is that it doesn't have a traditional hinge. So, the animal is what keeps the two sides of its shell together. So, there's not a real hinge on it. And the animal, it buries itself. So, the thicker part of the shell is the part that would be buried in the sand. And then the animal, the little floppy thing that's kind of coming out, that would be extended upwards and it would it would filter feed. So that, like I said, the thicker part of it would be buried in the sand. And what's interesting is because it doesn't have a hinge, those two shells are able to kind of rock back and forth like that. And so that this is not a true pair, but just to kind of demonstrate how the animal would kind of like bury itself. So that is what an angel w a deceased angel wing looks like. It won't go to waste. I'm going to leave it here. I'm sure a crab something will will make sure that that animal, like I said, doesn't go to waste. So, a couple other broken things. Here's another one of those egg case. Oh, bummer. So, there's eggs in there. Yeah, there's so many of them. I'm just going to leave it be. I'm going to kind of hope that the tide will come in, maybe capture those and get it back out into the water. But I mean, there's just so many egg casings. I would be spending my entire morning here just bringing them back into the water. Here we have another paper fig. A pair of paper figs. So, I didn't hold on to that angel wing shells, but I did get a pair of paper figs. Yay! Urchins. Well, I'm sad they're dead, but I'm going to go ahead and collect them. I prefer to find them living, but you know what? If they didn't make it, then okay, fine. So, I am going to collect this short spine sea urchin. Awesome. Oh, that's must be a true tulip because of the color. A Well, it is a true tulip. H. However, what's kind of interesting is if you hold it like so, so at some point that is what the sea shell looked like and the animal continued to grow and spiral and build onto its shell. Interesting. So, yeah, it was that size at some point, but then it kind of kept growing and broke. Oh, but not this one. Oo. Ooh, that's another really good one. Okay, so that's another true tulip. They get much bigger than the banded tulips. They also their banding is different. I know that these guys have actual bands on them as well, but they're much closer together and you can kind of feel them on the shell. Oh, all right. So, there's another angel wing. There were quite a few of them. So, another deceased angel wing. I don't know. They tend to prefer to live in muddy areas, so I don't know if I don't know. You can find the the actual wings on the beach no problem, but they like kind of muddy areas. So curious that you'd find them here hinged like that. That's a beautiful paper fig. That is fantastic. Oh, and here's a cockle. It's called an egg cockal. Kind of cool. So there would be two halves of that egg cockle. That would be neat to see to see one that's hinged. Okay. Yay. More urchins. And for me, I'm just excited because they were missing for a long time. So, Hurricane Ian came through in September of 2022. After that hurricane, I hadn't seen any urchins, none, until maybe just at the end of last year. So, I'm really happy to see that they're kind of kind of coming back. Um, this one was exciting because you can see the five individual parts. Can you see them? I've pointed them out in the past. They have pental radial symmetry. And what I did with the urchins, I just brought them home and I let them sit and dry out and then the spines just kind of flake off. I'm learning now. This is interesting. So, we're looking through the top of the urchin down. That circular white thing is called Aristotle's lantern. It's five parts of that, too. And that is the mouthpiece for the urchin. So that is what the little critter actually eats with. Apparently Aristotle had a lantern made of bone and it kind of looks like that and that's why that has its name Aristotle's lantern. So it's the the mouthpiece of the urchin right next to one of those egg casings. So you know what? This is very different. This is really really different. I don't typically spend a lot of time up here in the seaweed and in the rack lines. So this is kind of cool doing something kind of different. And I got myself a couple of urchins in the process. Now mo, you know, I I like the water. I tend to try to at least keep checking the water, but frankly, most of the good stuff is up in the rack line. It's kind of more concentrated. Yeah. And I just can't shell in the water at night. Okay. Now, now I know. Normally when I come, I've come like with the headlamp for a little while, but then the sun comes up and I don't intend on staying that long this time. So, it's just going to be dark pretty much the whole time. Terrific. So, you can, like I said, you can find angel wings. It's very rare to find two of them at simultaneously or, you know, a true pair. Beautiful. So, that's another lovely angel wing. Paper fig probably. Yeah. Yep. Great day for paper figs. And, you know, like I haven't seen them Oh, shoot. in a year. So, it's like one of those things you just don't know what the beach is going to provide. What's going to be on the for sale rack today. So, it looks like paper figs are definitely there. A couple of the angel wings. Oh, that's kind of cool. So, this is the carropus from a flame streaked box crab. Kind of pretty. A Yeah, those barnacles are not smart. So, that is part of a crab. I don't collect them. I did find an entire crab. This is deceased. And I'm just going to rearrange its little claws to kind of show you. That's why they call it a box crab because it kind of can condense itself into this neat little package. So, that's the uh flame streaked box crab. So, different stuff up here. Okay. remove some of that garbage. I'm having a hard time finding that as well. Just like anything, I guess you really I guess basically what it comes down to is you got to be like on top of whatever it is you're going to find. Otherwise, you're not going to see it. So, it's definitely harder. Another beautiful angel wing. Oh, that's awesome. Oh, that's terrific. It's funny those wings as they get bigger I they get much sturdier or at least they feel a lot sturdier as they get bigger. Now that's kind of cool. I know it's got some stuff on it, but that's a chalky lucine which I like cuz it's so bulbous and I'm probably not going to hold on to it, but I just think it's kind of cool. So if you find a big weird looking bowl like that, that's a chalky lucine. Oh, a mermaid's purse. Oh, cool. Now, I'm not as familiar with these. This is like literally like only the second one I've ever found. And upon doing some research, it's probably from a clear nose skate and they tend to breed between December and May. And so, we'll find those egg casings about this time of year. Oh, that is really cool. Now, if now I'm really curious like is there something inside it? Well, we are going to find out. And I would typically try to like hold that up to the sun. All right. Well, that's not going to work, is it? I'm really interested in that weird little tendril. But I might not have the sun, but I do have a second light source. So, if I hold that over the light source, I can see that there's nothing in there. It is empty. Cool. So, now I know for sure it's safe to collect. Otherwise, I might not have kept it just because I'm not familiar with it. But safe to collect. So, I'm going to carry on collecting more kind of cool things. Now, this is another calico scallop, but it's actually broken, but I can't really see. On the left, it's got I mean, tiny little chips. Normally in the daylight, I I just I wouldn't collect that, but I couldn't I can't see. It's dark. It's not as good. So, I'm going to work out some of the stuff when I get home. Okay, we have another one of those sinistra sinestrm shells or lightning welk. Oh, that is lovely. See, left-handed, left opening. So, another fabulous lightning welk. Oh, a parelk. Whoa, we got a lot going on here. So, parelk sea shell that has some jingles. Those shiny shells are jingles, which are by valves. We have the bottom and the top on that. There's an eastern white slipper snail in there. That white thing. And I think more jingles. And then there's a slipper. So, we Now, the slipper snail is actually a gastropod. It doesn't have two bits to it where the jingles they kind of attach themselves. So, it's just interesting that we have by valves and a gastropod hanging out together on a parallel. Sorry, that was probably a shell nerd alert moment. So, we'll get that into the water. Oh, I see a lump and it's dark. But, let's get up here and take a good look. M. Yeah. I mean, I guess for somebody it could be a keeper. I'm not going to hold on to that. And there's a couple of reasons. One, it's a little bit too beat up for me. And two, looks like somebody laid some sort of eggs in there. So, that is another reason I am not going to remove that. I wonder what kind of eggs. Of course, now I'm wondering. I I don't know. I don't know. I'm not even going to guess. So, I'll leave that there. Oh. Oh, hold on. There's another lump. Oh, it's a horse conunk. But you know what? It's alive. I see that reddish pink. Yep, that's its foot. So that I know that that animal is alive. So I'm wearing boots to keep my feet dry. It was in the 50s. It was not going to warm up. So I'm just going to leave that creature where it is. But where there's, you know, where there's other big lumps, there could be more. All right. That looks like an old lightning welk. And bits and pieces. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Old lightning woke. And that is I can't tell, but I guess at the time I could, so I decided to leave it. Oh, here's a little horse conchk. Oh, yep. It is a little horse conk. And it is alive. So, not collectible. Be I love that size. A little bit bigger than that. Oh, it's so pretty. All right, little horse. Back you go. So, I did manage to find kind of like these tide pools kind of sort of, you know, since the waves aren't kind of coming here directly. I'm able to kind of hunt in the water a little bit. Probably hunt probably a lot of live stuff here. So, yeah, that's a live apple mir attached to one of those lightning welks. I don't know why they do that. Now, apple mirs, they do drill into other shells. I find them attached to empty shells all the time. Practice. I don't know. All right. So, trying to discern. Is there anything decent that we should check out? Oh, yes. That would qualify. We should definitely check that out. Oh, it's a true tulip. Look, it's eating a crab arm. Oh, cool. So, they do eat detritus. Now, typically they prey on the parels, banded tulips, other kind of like midsized gastropods, but apparently they're scavengers, too. kind of cool. Oh, there's another one. Oh, it's so pretty. Look at the color on that. Oh, yep. So alive. Gorgeous. All right, true tulip. You are not done with your shell. Hopefully, we'll meet again some other day. What about you? Nope. You are a snail. Lovely fighting conchk. Good job. Nice. Nice brown color on there. Oh, there's another nice fighting conchk. And it's empty. So, yay. Yeah, it's got some knobs. And one knob is kind of weird. Looks like there's three of them, which just in my anything that's just a little bit unique or different. I love it even more. Yep, that's alive. There's a little bit of resistance. The animal is out of its shell, buried in the sand, doing its snail thing. I try not to disturb them, but I like to check just to make sure that they're not empty. So, it's kind of a balance. Be kind to the critters, but don't leave any of the empty shells behind. That's an empty shell. Yeah. So, that is one of those synctura hunteria or banded tulip. Oh, that's a good That's a big size one, too. That's great. you. Yeah, you are [Music] alive. Okay, shark eye. Yeah, most of a shark eyee. All right. Another apple mir. A little bit of that purple on the inside. Very nice. That's where the back in the day that's where they used to get their purple color from. The royalty would get them from the apple mir's. That's why purple is kind of considered to be the uh color of royalty. It's not purple, but look at that color. Oh, so it is another true tulip. It is alive, clearly. Oh, it's gorgeous. All right, friend. Let's put you back. Tuck you back in. See if we can find something empty. Nope. What about Nope. Okay. You know, it feels like it feels like the real shell game. Although, I'm not picking it up to see if there's a marble under it. I'm just picking up to see if I can see if it's empty. So, yes, the shell game. You are probably alive. Yep. Not a winner. Not this time. That's okay. Critters should be doing their critter thing. Oh, there's another true to Yep. Yep. Another living big old true tulip. What else is there? Lots more creatures. Yeah, that's it's got to be alive. I've never found one that big. Yep, it's alive. Nope. Never found one that big. Oh, it's beautiful. Well, I mean, I guess I found them that big. I just nothing that I actually was able to take from the beach. There's another little banded tulip. There's a little apple mir. So, just by the do or the the sheer nature of night shelling, I'm not finding a big variety or I don't know that that really has anything to do with night shelling. Just tonight I'm I'm I'm struggling. Maybe I would struggle even if the light, you know, even if the sun was up and I'd have more people to contend with. Oh, you that's beautiful. Look at that orange color. But I am definitely finding a couple of those true tulips have been really nice. Oh, a hermit crab. You okay, buddy? Yeah. It looks like you know what? You look pretty that looks like a nice size home for you. It's obviously broken, so no problems here. You can keep that shell. You know, if you could just train all your other friends to hang out in Broken Shells, that would be awesome. Much appreciated. Okay, another Sinister Fulgar Sinestrom. I think by the next video I would have nailed that. So, Lightning Welk Sinister Fulgar Sinestrom. And that's probably a Speaking of Sinister Fulgar Sinestrm, it's alive. It's got to be. Yeah. Yep. Well, just wanted to make sure. I'd hate to uh leave that behind if there was actually empty. Oh, man. That is beautiful. But not empty. So, keep looking. Good to know. I still got first crack. Now, at this point, I did see another headlamp. It's like 5:30 in the morning, so I guess if you really want to beat everybody here, get there early. Beautiful buttercup lucine. Oh man, that is gorgeous. Okay, here's a little different. All right, this is a little different. It's not the rack line. Little shell pile here. All right, couple of scallops. I haven't had too many opportunities or I haven't seen that many. Hopefully, they won't be broken. Okay. And another. Yeah, they're a little more interesting. Oh, look, a rough scallop, too, just compared to all the white that all the other shelves are. And that's their natural color. They're just they're just lighter like that. And if you like cockals, I mean, you would have been able to fill up, I don't know, garbage bags full of them. I do collect them. I probably took a couple, but not not garbage bags full for certain. And then the pen shells that I rarely mention. So, there were, you know, kind of shell piles. Oh, there's another rough scallop. Awesome. Yep. You are terrific. Another lovely scallop. Oh, back in the water. Good thing. It was calling me. Oo, so pretty. I know it's not like a bright bright orange one, but man, that's pretty. Super happy that that is going to be the last shell I'm going to collect from this night beach adventure. Now, since this is the first time I've done this, what did I learn? Well, shelling at night is way more challenging than shelling with the sunlight. You, like I had mentioned, you really got to be on top of what you're shelling for. You're not going to have too many opportunities to find other stuff unless it's huge. You can't shell in the water, or at least I didn't feel safe shelling in the water, so I just pretty much stuck to the rack line. Okay, so that maybe the tide doesn't matter. I don't know. I'm going to have to do this a couple times to really kind of figure that out. Now, it was awesome to have the beach to myself other than the four other people that I saw the entire time I was out there. And look, there are benefits like they didn't have to use sunscreen. I didn't have to deal with traffic. There was no problem with parking or competition really other than those four people. So, I probably will try it again. I got a new headlamp. I'm not going to be allowed to use white lights after May 1st cuz it will be turtle season. But I, you know, I I got a new headlamp. It does have a red light function on it. So, I'm just going to have to see how it goes. I'm not saying that I'll never go night shelling again. I'll just know the challenges that I'll have to overcome. Now, you might have noticed I didn't get to beach time. It's kind of hard to show you the beach or anything in the middle of the night. So, I did find this previous beach time from Santael. So, before we get to the garbage and the shell review, I'm going to give everybody a little beach time. So, even though it was night, I did manage to find a little bit of garbage. 4.55 oz. Not too much. However, it does add up because in total, I've removed a little over 74 pounds of garbage from the beach. Now, I did take a lot of urchins. They didn't all survive. And it just happens. It's probably another reason that I take kind of what I can because oh look a keyhole keyhole urchin. But yeah, they're just not all going to survive and it's just kind of the way that it is. So there were a lot of those paper figs which was super fun. And then there were some urchins that did survive. Couple of distoenas on the top as well as some jingles, some angel wings, some channelneled duck clams. There is a base scallop, an egg cockal, and some giant Atlantic cockals, some buttercup lucines, some lightning welks. There is a cohog up there, some Florida prickly cockals, some rough scallops, calico scallops, apple mir, fighting conchs, there's one Florida horse conchk, and then my favorites were those true tulips. I never find three or four in the same adventure. as well as that mermaid's purse, which was really kind of cool. So, this was a really cool learning experience for me. One, I am going to pick up stuff that's broken. Yeah, I couldn't believe I got home. I'm like, no way. But that's what happens when you can't really see. And that's fine. I will just take those back to the beach and recycle them. But I thought it was pretty funny that I was collecting broken shells. And, you know, we really didn't get a chance to take a good good look at these true tulips. So that one's really pretty. I guess like a reddish brownish one. That's really pretty. This one I would just go straight up and say that's chocolate. Beautiful brown true tulip. They're all just a beautiful size, nice color, nice aperture. And I think this one might be my favorite cuz it's kind of red. It's reddish. I would love to find one of those like fire engine or those like orange ones. And then this one. This one's fine, just not quite as spectacular as the other ones. So, that was really fun. And, you know, it did force me to go shelling in that rack line like I don't normally do. So, maybe in the future I'll go ahead and spend a little bit more time there because I'm just going to find different treasures. Although, it's going to be hard to pull me away from the water. Patreons, thank you. Thank you so much. I hope you're enjoying some of the content that I am sharing with you over on Patreon. If you would like something a little extra, head on over there because I do post things as much as I can to try to give you a little bit of extra beachy goodness. Now, next week, we're going to go to Fort Myers Beach. I know they had done the re reenourishment and I was really, really worried, but it worked out great. So, have yourself a great week and I hope to see you next Sunday.