The beach is alive! Beachcombing a Florida beach looking for critters and awesome shells!

howdy beach friends today we're doing something a bit different than what we normally do i had went over to bunch beach to go on a walk and i wasn't planning on making a video i had just wanted to wander around for a bit looking for critters and the next thing you know i'm finding neat things and i really want to share it with you so i decided to make a video after all today we're going to explore bunch beach one of the more alive beaches down here in southwest florida so let's go to the beach [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this lovely critter is what convinced me to start filming like i said i really just wanted to do a little exploring i didn't even bring my shell bag next thing you know i'm finding all these cool critters and whatnot and so i decided yep i'm going to go ahead and make a video because i want to share this stuff with you guys i hate to keep it all to myself so we are seeing these are live crown conchs and we are going to get quite personal with these guys a little bit later right here we have a lightning whelk now right there that's the lightning welcome i had spotted it i always find live lightning well care i mean like every single time i come you see these guys but i was kind of hoping that maybe it was empty maybe there was nobody home and this was going to be a keeper but since i like i said i typically find them alive i just want to be kind of delicate because this guy was really dug in so i figured okay if it's empty cool yay i'll get to keep it and if not i don't want to disturb the critter too too much so i kind of just lift that up and i saw the foot and you probably didn't catch it but there was a dark spot of the animal you can see the foot so that guy is alive and well not a keeper i figure i'll just tuck them back in and leave them and here we have a live crown conch look how pretty we are gonna see a whole bunch of these guys today i don't want to spoil anything so let's just go one critter at a time one shell at a time this is a crown there is its operculum it is a lovely lovely little critter so we'll put put that guy back and keep looking here we have a sunray venus and i thought that was really cool it is not alive i know it's hinged but it is empty the way that the pattern on the shell is completely different and there's that vertical line totally different kind of neat all right here we have i was kind of hoping not a keeper this is a live tulip so let's go ahead and take a peek at this gorgeous banded tulip that is totally alive dang it we gotta put that back right where we found it and let him or her finish looking for snacks and whatever it is that banded tulip was doing and what have we got here now this is one of those moments that right before you pick up like a really crazy awesome shell just kind of stop and oh i was freaking out look at the spikes on this that is a crown conch totally empty totally awesome great color great spikes i was literally over the moon i was screaming flipping out on the inside i thought that was the the definitely the coolest crown i've ever found and i put it away and i had to take it back out again so this is me taking a second look at the same shell i was over the moon i thought that was just awesome so really glad i decided to uh film and share that with you here we have that is a little horseshoe crab kind of swimming around not gonna pick it up don't know if it's male or female but that little guy horseshoe crab right so this is a little bit of bunch beach i used to come here much more often until i figured out it really wasn't a shelling beach but it's excellent for checking out critters what else we got that's probably another live crown conch you can kind of see it's called the siphon we'll talk more about that that little black piece kind of poking out the front of the shell but um as i was saying this is bunch beach it's actually a very shallow beach it doesn't the water does not get very deep so it is fantastic for walking around looking for critters this beach i typically don't go shelling at there's not a lot of shells i know we got really lucky with that crown so hey if you want to try your luck on a good crown conk give beat uh bunch beach a try otherwise you're probably going to find lots of cool critters here i find um live lightning wealth live crown conch a couple you have clams you'll see i'm going to show you a shot of the beach in a little bit but it's definitely different than the beaches that we normally go to so this is an example of what the shells normally look like so this is a crown conch and this is the kind of condition that i typically will find the keeper shells here at bunch so not really a shelling beach but you know what every once in a while maybe you'll get a little lucky that guy is a keeper so i've gotten lucky twice so far let's keep looking okay we've reached a part of the beach we can't go any further um cool kayak trail through there i'll show you we're gonna take a look at an overhead view but we can't go any further the entire beach is only about a half mile long so it's not very big either here is another sunray venus the critters that live here tend to like to eat clams so i'm not entirely surprised to find these kind of broken and uh hanging around looks like we have another one another sunrise venus hinged broken maybe a lightning look got at that hard to say another one not too many a pretty good shape all things considered it's got that nice pink undertone color versus the kind of like the normal which is like the gray that's kind of different same shell same species totally different color i've decided to keep the pinkish one yeah we'll keep that one and it looks like a disc dosenia again not entirely surprised to see something probably eat that guy no drill holes the um these guys kind of wedge their selves and open them the lightning walks use the the edge of their shell actually to kind of wedge in between the clams to get in there and eat their prey oh look that's not even the same shell that's a different one so that is another fantastic super spiky crown conch oh i'm so happy it's so weird because again i knew i don't come here to go shelling and i really didn't even mean to find anything and i found these two excellent crown conks so excited and here we have just a layer of a horseshoe crab that had shed its exoskeleton and so that is just a layer it's not a body or anything just a layer so that little critter can get bigger kind of cool all right time for a little bit of housekeeping if you have been wondering how you can support me as i create my videos that i share with you now you can i've opened an account with patreon and there are three different tiers of support you can choose from if you do choose to support me you'll be charged at the beginning of the month so i thought this would be a good time to roll this out and let you know about it i hope to make swf beach life a full-time adventure instead of just weekend trips so if you'd like to help me on this quest head on over to patreon i'll go ahead and put a link in the description box below as well and i'll go ahead and thank you in advance if you do decide to support me so here is the actual beach of bunch beach and when i talk about shells tons of oysters tons and tons of oysters and a couple of different you know you might see an ark and okay well here's some garbage that is some glass it's not sea glass it's really just something that needs to go in the recycling bin so it's you know again not really a great shelling beach ah dang it here's another piece all right gotta pick that up just afraid someone will step on it as i was saying lots of oysters lots of just if you do find a decent shell it's kind of gonna be all beat up so again not really a shelling beach a fantastic beach to come to i definitely you know recommend you come here to go exploring but you're not going to find lots of cool shells like we normally do it's just a different kind of speed different kind of beach but you still should probably come check it out because it really is pretty it's very rustic no hotels no condos no facilities there's you can pretty much park and then that's it go exploring it's i think it would be great for little kids because that fear of anything happening to them is not really there the water is very shallow i'll show you it way out you can go and it's still quite shallow see look at those people all the way out there still shallow the water's probably not i don't know maybe to their knees so we are all the way at the other end of bunch beach and here again another great opportunity to go kayaking lots of people go fishing here so this is the gulf of mexico here is sanibel we go there all the time here is fort myers beach we go there all the time and there that is where bunch beach is and so we'll zoom into bunch a little bit more that is bunch beach the whole thing that's it like i said it's only about a half mile from end to end the entrance is here and then typically i'll get to the beach and go left and i like to kind of creep around the water in this area so that's where i like to look for the hermit crabs and the lightning wells crown whatever kind of critter i might come across and so we're still up at the north end and it's real pretty all right what else we got more crown conch yay all right we're gonna get a little personal with some of these guys now first i want to point out the way that the shell on this is pointing those spires the spikes are really kind of going up those crazy awesome shells i got the spikes were coming out so they're all very different this guy is very small he's not really that big but look at the condition of a shell that is not a very pretty shell sorry but it's you know very slimy lots of algae look at him move around okay so what is kind of poking out of the front of the shell there is what's called the siphon and the siphon is what they use to breathe through it's usually black and they extend it drawing in sea water for oxygen but they also use that to detect prey so they'll look for food these guys eat um oysters scallops clams and they also eat dead stuff so they're good at kind of keeping the beach clean too so he is or she is moving look at how easily they're moving i found that interesting the way they could twist the twisting of the shells look at the little head kind of poking out under there oh so cute i don't know why i find these guys cute but i do so that there you can kind of see the head poking out which is totally different than the siphon which we're kind of talking about there's look at how cute we got very personal with this little guy and he did there's the operculum and it does kind of look like he's leaving a little layer of slime but hey snail has got to do what it's got to do i understand oh he's so cute so that is the crown conch they are typically seen cruising along sediments near grass beds salt marshes and oyster reefs which would explain why we saw these guys here because they were so there are a lot of oysters here and they're long black siphons we had talked about that too that's what they extend out to kind of smell and to breathe so let's put him back or her back now i had seen one of these guys in action this is from a different day this is over in sanibel but i had found these and you can really kind of see much better that siphon that i was talking about the black siphon that's kind of coming out the front of their shell so i just wanted to give you another shot of this guy and here is yet another one let's check this one out and okay shells a lot prettier looking going right for the head there's a little siphon poking out so this shell again is still small and not quite as completely covered with algae like the one previous to this guy i think their bodies are really pretty they're the black the black and white color super pretty and what's interesting about these shells too is they're very very different i they're all crown conchs but the the spikes can be different some have spikes some don't some of the spikes point up some point out some don't have them on the bottom whirl so there's so many different variations of this particular kind of snail which also makes it kind of interesting and i thought it was or i'm still thinking it's interesting how easily they can kind of twist that big old shell around so we'll put her back and let her do finish doing her thing so i'm still having a grand old time again i didn't bring my shell back just kind of came for a walk and i found those shelves and the creatures so i'm really really really really happy always love to be at the beach and when i'm finding cool stuff to share with you guys i definitely definitely get happy about that because i know everyone can't come to the beach the way i can so i'm very happy to share you see the operculum there look at the condition of that shell that literally looks like it's got like oh tons of slime on it but healthy little little snail go ahead do your little snail thing probably got a couple more here and i'm always torn because i want to share but i don't really want to disturb them so it's kind it's hard i can't help myself and i'm trying to i don't know make it as untraumatic for these guys as possible we'll be picking up a little bit of sand and they obviously need the water to breathe so we don't want to keep them out too long but let's take a look at this shell and this critter pretty critter the shell again the spikes are going to be pointing up instead of out and that shell is super slimy super slimy shell so not time at all to keep that guy and so here's some more people they've come to the beach and again look how shallow you can really get out there and uh go exploring very very fun cool beach to be at and something else i just wanted to mention about the crown conchs they do get to about five inches in length the big one that i found was about two and a half inches and the females get larger than the males do and that we find that in lots of different species iron not ironically but the horseshoe crab is another species where the females get bigger than the the males so we didn't really have a hall definitely not really all found a couple things found tons of stuff that we couldn't bring home but the stuff we could bring home oh yeah i was so excited i managed to kind of pick the barnacles off of this guy and i literally would walk by and pick this shell up for days now you let me know am i nuts is that just not really that great a show i thought it was great maybe it's just because i like spiky shells i don't know it's hard to say and i also couldn't wait to dip it in acid so i quickly just dipped just the two of these i didn't do a whole production i just wanted to dip these guys in oh man the color the brown but really for me i mean the colors amazing totally amazing for this kind of shell but those spikes that's what's killing me or not in a b and not in a bad way i'm just loving loving those spikes so that was our little walk definitely different than what we normally do i hope you liked it please leave me a comment let me know what you thought we did a little bit slower found a lot less shells but we did more exploring with critters and i found those two amazingly spiky shells which i don't know for me was really really cool but let me know what you thought thank you for hanging with me i will see you again next week we're going to be heading over to lover's key where we're going to get another update on the welcome and discovery center and see what things we'll find at the beach there so have a great week see you then