​​Escape to an island covered in seashells. The 10K islands are seashell heaven!

hello Beach friends escaping to an island blanketed in seashells sounds like a dream doesn't it surrounded by these stunning natural works of art immersed in the beauty of nature this is my idea of the ultimate getaway in fact it's such a perfect Escape that I left my day job behind me to pursue these ultimate getaways fulltime and today we're going to be escaping to kis Island now as far as the tide is concerned the tide will be going out the entire time we are on the island and typically I talk a lot about the tide I don't know that kais Island it really really matters now you'll see here as soon as I get off the boat and I start kind of making my way onto the island proper there's sea shells everywhere however I listened to my guide and she said don't stop there keep going so I am going to in the beginning of this trip do a lot of hiking but through the magic of editing I don't have to bore you with all that we're going to get right to the seashells so the first one I pick up all right so this is a gy Nautica and I will identify all of the seashells that I pick up so it's very highly likely that you're going to learn a thing or two about seashells and I'm going to pick up big beautiful seashells I'm going to pick up delicate seashells we're going to say hi do a gorgeous Little Critter or two I'm going to pick up beautifully colored seashells multi multiple seashells a bucket list seashell as well as a seashell I really don't normally get to find it's going to be a gorgeous day here on kis and if you're ready to see what all is out there for us today let's go to the beach [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right I have been here a few minutes just kind of checking things out here is a massive pile of pen shells and I always check them out because the horse CS tend to kind of hang out with the pen shells there's nothing here so I'm going to keep moving now I'd mentioned before the drop off is here on the North End of the island I want to try to get Mid Island do my thing and then get back to the boat drop off again so that's why I'm kind of Motoring to get to the middle of the island but it looks like I was slowed down by a banded tulip and a Fighting Conch so if there was an area that looked like it might be a good concentration of shells I'm stopping to see what's here there is another one of those Gody nauticas or colorful moon snail I abs absolutely love them oh here's a banded tulip this is a live though live Critter that's the front of the shell so the Critter we'll need to go back in the water or little puddle something yeah and then of course just what else is here anything good oh oh something was spitting oh hello Apple mrix you are gorgeous with all your little angles and everything so that's the kind of specimen I'm looking for oh hello alphabet cone so that's one of the oh yes empty one of the more desirable shelves for me I absolutely love finding the alphabet cones yep empty oh it's gorgeous that is what I'm talking about and that is why I like kais so much it never disappoints now this is a more of a juvenile spiny Jewel box these Delight me because they're one of the only shells I can think of that I get defin that are really spiky well the crown con but that is a spiny Jewel box oh my gosh all right so this is a Fighting Conch oh it's beautiful it's got like a little dimple in it so there are a lot of these these are more common and so I just kind of pass them over the ones that are a little more unusual or rare those are the ones I'm looking for this is a lace mirx and I do want to rinse it off just so I can kind of see if it's got laciness to it it's moderately Lacy right so that is unlike the Apple mirx we also have the lace mirx and we also have the rose mirx we have actually a couple of different uh MX shells the garbage I will take and that goes right in my shell bag with everything else I don't do anything too too special just kind of pop it right in my shell bag and I sort it out at the end of my trip that is a Calico scallop now the Orange is a little unusual so I'm always really drawn to anything orange just cuz it's at least for the scallops it's hard to find them when they're very orange oh that is so pretty that is a Florida cone a so the apperture is broken there I don't care though the coloring is so beautiful so that is a Florida cone oh are you alive yes you are so a lot I wouldn't say a lot of times sometimes when you find these shells the snail is not quite done with it so this is one of those um examples it is alive I was going to put it back where I found it but you let me just put you in a little bit deeper water so you can grow up to be another beautiful seashell maybe make B seashells had to reach over uhhuh it was kind of yelling at me this beautiful fighting con and now normally I wait till the end of my trip because they're so heavy but you're kind of beautiful I'm going to make an exception all right banded tul up Ki Island oh look how glossy it is beautiful yeah so kis yeah they have a lot of banded tulips down here in kis Island I see two oh nutmeg fantastic this is called a common nutmeg I love that little twirly in the aperture and then I did see that other here's another lace mirx it's moderately Lacy oh it's beautiful oh and we're going to go for the little horse conch as well so that's one of the little shells that can grow quite large oh that's beautiful oh we're not done yet that is a little okay that's a little Gulf oyster drill it's missing it's little brown stripe but that is okay oh handful of beautiful little seashells so what else is here oh something shiny the lettered Olive these are truly the bling the shiny gorgeous seashells of the beach the lettered olives you can literally feel how shiny they are yeah yep always really fun to find a lettered Olive and a lightning Welk this one happens to be yeah it's pretty good size W they are pretty common even though they're so beautiful and I I still keep picking them up they're not very rare there is another Apple mirx nice size that's lovely okay what else is here oh okay nutmeg so there is another one of those common nutmegs and oh a Gody Nautica yeah I'm probably not going to hold on to that G natica but we'll put the that uh nutmeg will hold on to oh here's another lace mirc so that one's kind of leasy it's got its laciness to it oh it's gorgeous and then the longer it hangs out here at the beach those edges will kind of get worn down a little bit so that happened to be a very good example of police mxs all right a dis doia it's like record pattern lovely there's another okay that's living so that is a banded toilet we'll get that into a puddle or something another lightning wel now I'll just pause for a minute so you can kind of take it all in most of it is really ponderous arcs there's some oysters there some cockal I do see what else is here I see some spiny jewel boxes yeah there's the single and a pair so that's a hinged pair and a single so yeah the longer the shelves have been here they'll get rounded down that's just fine I'm going to get that banded tulip into some water let's keep keep hunting a I do like a ribbed canis that one's broken though what about you oh you're very lovely so that's another moon snail a shark eye awesome yeah it it can be overwhelming like there's literally shells everywhere and you're just kind of trying to tease out the treasures that are buried in between the more common things so this is a pawelk and it does have a lot of Barnacle stuff on it however I'm going to keep it I'm going to clean that cuz it's a nice color it's nice size so I will keep that pear Welk you oh cool yeah was checking make sure you're not alive I'm checking make sure you don't have a big old hermit crab in there so that is another lightning wel beautiful size not big big big big but the and the big big ones those are going to be females they need their size to create the eggs that they produce this is a paper fig it feels very delicate it really always just it's interesting how they manage to stay intact I see a critter here so there is his little eyeballs right there it's kind of peeking out the side of it shell oh you're so cute all right let's get a closer look so this is a fighting Kong obviously it is alive they all have blue eyes I have yet to find one that has either brown eyes or green eyes they all tend to have those blue colored eyes eyes and they're called fighting con because typically they would be swinging their body around this one seems to be either content or it's just not really much of a fighter it's more of a lover not a fighter all right thanks for saying hi I'm just going to just kind of put yeah that looks good that is satisfying close enough to the water okay what else is here oh there's another nutmeg oh look at that a twof fur all right the nutmeg section of kais island is here oh those are nice and they'll come darker lighter I like them if they have their little TOPS oh they're fun little nutmegs terrific little seashells all right angel wing so it is it's a little broken that's okay could take a nail file to that you can you can literally just kind of know grind that down and the angel wings it's it's not easy to find them that big so I'm going to put a little effort into saving that I'm going to put a little effort into saving this one too this is a hermit crab a dimpled hermit crab in this Fighting Conch and it was in a wacky um location I I mean eventually the tide might have come in and kind of help lift this Critter so it wouldn't have been stuck there and this Critter is not going to come out and that's fine that's fine dimpled hermit crab he just kind of moved you there you go all right while I'm here sure might as well snag this lightning Welk why not here's another fighting K and this one does have a Strom boid Notch right there because it is a member of The Conch family or stromedy now these are vegetarians so even though they're called fighting con they're not going to be running around drilling holes into anything or harassing other creatures they just kind of eat algae they're like sea cows not to be confused with a manate so I guess I have to be careful what I call these so this it's a living fighting con and put this one in the water and watch this who yeah now it's going to get all now it's all feisty and then here is a living banded tulip and you can see its head right there it's kind of hard to kind of tease apart I mean because they're little gushy they're gooey little creatures yes I love the creatures come on where's an octopus or something else let's see all right or hermit crab okay manifested a hermit crab so this is a ribbed canis and I do really like these seashells I'm sorry little I think you're a thin striped hermit crab I do like your shell you picked a fine shell and you're kind of cute I don't see them get very big though these these little hermit crabs they always just find him little I wonder if they only get so big well actually I looked it up they get to be about an inch big I never see him that big though oh lightning W yep okay I didn't get a rib canteras but I did get a lightning wel out of the stoop woohoo oh a bay scallop yeah I'm going to I didn't try to blurt it out see if you wanted to try to figure out what these seashells are for my return viewers so this is a bay scallop and I can tell that because of the color um I'm trying to kind of figure out is there a way to really differentiate these from the calicos and I was thinking the ribs like these are very Square looking so maybe that can be a tell that those are more square with a rib so we'll see as we find other scallops now this is a living Florida cone I've only found this is maybe like my third one oh what's kind of cool though is the periostracum on this shell so the outer coating let me just pause it for a minute isn't that neat it's kind of like orange color and furry I've never seen that that is awesome so little Florida cone doing its awesome thing okay but I'm looking for stuff that is safe to take home like you B scallop cuz you're big the calicos only get so big the big like this that's about well they'll get a little bit bigger than that but that is a Calico scallop and that is a really nicely colored one too you don't really see them red or like that cranberry color oh that's awesome Calico scallop so yes it is a gorgeous day to be out here on kis it's the end of November so it's not too cold or anything wo an alpha bed cone unfortunately it is alive all right it's always exciting to find him and then just kind of like all right don't get to keep it it's alive and so I'm going to demonstrate the old if you're carrying a live animal to the beach yep you just throw another finger out there just in case you don't want to leave that parel behind and cuz I got my other hand if I had a third arm it would make this very easy but it would make it really hard to find tops that fit properly or jackets for that matter so we're going to drop off the live cone oh yes I didn't want to maybe lose that pwel gorgeous no cleaning required awesome and here's another a Calico scallop and so is looking at the ribs again are they more rounded maybe maybe a little bit more rounded all right I'm going to keep picking them up and kind of see if I can figure out a difference but that is a Calico scallop oh there's so many things here oh I was looking at that colorful moon snail yeah you're fine some of them are really stripy but dark Rich color and let's just that is a horse conch just a piece with some Knuckles and a what is that it is that is a mauve mouth drill so a drill and a moon snail oh a coffee malus now that's kind of fun what you know what else is fun this fact that mampus snails they have a lung instead of gills and so that means they breathe air they don't have to be in the water to breathe unlike these other sea snails they have gills really neat okay here is another one of those common nutmegs yeah terrific now the nutmegs I found a couple of them um they can be albino so that's really really fun the well frankly anything albino is pretty cool in my humble opinion so this is another shark eye ooh an albino shark eyy I found white ones because you know the shelves when they hang out on the beach long enough they will get very very white but but that's more from bleaching than actual color so that beautiful shark eye and here is another intact St oh really beautiful so it's a paper fig yep and they will tolerate bleach you I will try to use bleach to remove those Barnacles from it all right another Bay scallop you have some nice color on you and look at those ribs yeah you're looking kind of square but frankly you're looking like they also did with the Calico I don't know if that's going to help me all right so we have here a lovely Bay scallop look at the color on that broken true tulip w w all right so that is a true tulip the they get much bigger and the color Rich colors on those true tulips I'll leave that here look for something that is not broken okay so we have Calico scallop and again the coloring for me it's kind of round the ribs they look a little bit more rounded but yeah I'm probably still going to go revert back to my old method just going by shape and color now when you're shelling on an island like this you don't typically run into too too many people it's very easy to kind of get away from people it's absolutely beautiful here now can you imagine if this whole island it did used to have trees with like thick branches and whatnot and you couldn't really get through here so in a way I'm kind of glad that some of the trees are dead so that we can kind of navigate here now this poor lightning wel is clearly quite dry it is it's kind of shrunk itself into its shell it needs water it needs water bad there you go hopefully that Critter will be okay I am not going to stick around to nurse it back to health we're going to keep looking for seashells so that is a Calico scallop a stunning orange one they don't typically come in that color that is beautiful oh here is a rough scallop so we don't get too too many scallops here but here's another one of the rough scallop actually has a texture on it that is rough hence its name another fun all right another Calico yep and the ribs you know yeah they're I'm just going to go with the color yeah they're round I they kind of look squarish roundish eh I was kind of hoping that the calicos would be round the bases would be square we're cut and dry it's done but not the case this time and I think what I'll do is contemplate that and I'll be quiet so you can enjoy some beach time okay the Hunt is still on here is a floor cone has a pretty nice looking aperture although of course there's a little crack in it yep so that is a very nice specimen let's see this one okay this one's cracked that's a little more normal so two lovely Florida cones now I do think my strategy or the strategy that was told to me is working get toward the middle of the island so the tide is going out but it doesn't matter I'm not really down by the water it's 63 so it warmed up a little bit nutmeg yeah H yep it was a great nutmeg day terrific nutmeg day here on kis oh my goodness when you see a color like that and a shape like that that is a rose MX kais has given me many many Rose Mires oh this one's a little broken on the aperture however I'm definitely keeping that so that's cool it's a little broken but that's a great find a little Rose MIRS awesome oh my gosh so this is a mangrove perrywinkle and it these shells are really hard to find because the animals themselves live kind of like above the water on rocks and trees and whatnot so they're not true land snails they're not really true sea snails so it's just kind of difficult to find the shells so that Mangrove Periwinkle kind of fun this is also kind of fun so this is a slipper snail but look at the crazy color on it so not unusual to find slipper snails I actually don't really pay that much attention to them but this one's really neat yeah a really neat slipper snail oh dear so it was like this massive piece of plastic and it was just like this giant like bag of some sort but luckily it was not buried it's something I'm going to be able to take off the island I love getting plastic out of the environment and into the garbage so I did carry I carry just in case I do have a little little garbage bag in my backpack a a kis you're welcome I'm happy to take the garbage from the beach and you gave me an alphabet cone a that's really sweet of you thank you very much I will take that alphabet cone along with all of that plastic that works for me ooh I'll take this too so this is a true tulip kind of like the broken one but this one's intact lovely lovely orange True tulip oh here's another one actually yeah that's another one very nice they get a lot bigger than the banded tulips and they're a lot less um common much more rare to find the true tulips at least in Southwest Florida I can change wherever you happen to be another paper fig oh and the ones I found today are beautiful with a little Flex of that darker color gorgeous all right now I think that is a black vulture it's about time for me to turn around because I do need to get back to where the boat drops us off and that's where that's going to be my ride off the island so I kind of try to time it so I can spend a majority of my time today at the middle of the island and then kind of scurry off the beach again oh oh look how spiky that is that is awesome so that's a spiny jewelbox a really cool one all right Apple mirx in the middle there that spiny JW boxo and there was also a lightning wel in there oh my goodness so this is another member of the moon snail family we call this a baby's ear oh it's broken a little bit that's all right though yeah baby's ears are not all that common I know they're very common in the Carolina is but not down here so that's pretty special that awesome little baby's ear here is an ospray here listen yeah sometimes you can hear that chirping a lot of times by the beach they are primarily Fish Eaters so you'll often see them hunting by the water so this is kis yeah it's really really beautiful oh you can see the shadow of the Osprey there so when I do pick my head up when I'm usually my head's down looking for that so that is a colorful moon snail with its gorgeous striping it's dark Rich colors beautiful yep that'll do oh hello look how shiny so that's another Fighting Conch with it's little it's got a couple little Barnacles but that purple tail oh it's really pretty plus it's time I'm probably getting yeah I'm ready getting ready to leave the island so I can start picking up the really heavy shells like the fighting so I do I've learned I learned my lesson those seashells happen to be my favorite but they also happen to be quite heavy so I try if I can I don't really collect those until I'm ready to leave the island so let's check the tide again yep it's going out you know it didn't hurt didn't harm it just kind of was what it was today well hello alphabet con I mean you're lovely but yeah I found a couple today I'm probably going to leave this for somebody else that'll be fun somebody can get off the boat and find an alphabet cone all right there's another lace MX I'll probably hold on to that but the cone let's put yeah that'll be fun for somebody else's collection and I'll do that I'll kind of keep something that I don't have even if it's not a great specimen and then I'll just kind of switch it out here's a darling little lace Mira fantastic oh lots of tinies it does look very wle trappy here but no luck not today oh it was really fun how did I get here well I'm glad you asked when I tour I always go with swfl shell guide I am personal friends with Ally I think she does a wonderful job and truly cares about her guests making sure they get the goods so I always go with Ally and I've never been disappointed now one last Critter before we go this is a brown pelican but it's head is white because it has its breeding colors on so this fella or gal is looking for some love all right garbage I managed to take 1.7 pounds of garbage from the beach so in total I've removed a little over 64 pounds of garbage today I also removed some angel wings some shark eyes one alternate Talon the mampus some drills giant Atlantic cockal we have Florida prickly cockles Buttercup Lucine some yellow prickly cockal some leas mrix below that we have some Fighting Conch some adults and juveniles then we have a worm snail we have lettered olives I see some colorful moon snails Apple mirck horse con I mentioned the lettered olives there the nutmegs there were a few we have the paper figs pear welks bay scallops Calico scallops there's an albino Florida prickly some lightning wels o ribbed caneris and a tinted caneris a turkey wing some true tulips some banded tulips button snails top snails spiny jewelbox there's uh Sunray Venus clams and then we have one alphabet cone some Florida cones and then my favorites today are that one alphabet cone The Mangrove perrywinkle the rose MIRS the baby's ear and that funny looking slipper snail so that was pretty awesome I have to there is no such thing as a bad day out at the beach a bad day out at the beach is always going to be better than a day in the office and frankly even my day in the office isn't so bad because I'm sitting here editing things about seashells so thank you patreons thank you from the bottom of my heart for choosing to support me and everybody else who chooses to stop by and watch thank you I hope you learned a little something next week we're going to Bunch Beach it's a local Beach I'm a local I had a fantastic time I found undisturbed angel wings I can't wait to share it was such a fun day at the beach for me so I hope you have yourself a great week and I'll see you again next Sunday