Florida virtual beach walk. Sanibel Island beachcombing and exploring for sea shells and critters.

cue the pelicans now that is a lovely welcome to the beach if i've ever seen one okay beach friends today we are going to be exploring sanibel island and a couple of different rack lines we're going to be zigging and zagging and we're probably going to find a couple of real fun things to check out we're going to say hi to a couple of critters too you know how i feel about those critters i just love my beach and all the things we get to find so if you're ready let's go to the beach [Music] [Music] okay here we are bright and early on sanibel the sun is not up yet and i'm not alone regardless of what time i get to the beach this time of year i'm always gonna have company yep so we're here nice and early it is a rather low tide i didn't bring the headlamp i didn't want to come here quite that early but i definitely wanted to catch this low tide and get here early so let's see what the beach is going to leave for us today to check out all right we're going to start off with a zigzag arc also known as a turkey wing i'm not a real formal kind of gal so i tend to kind of go with the informal names of things so that is another turkey wing although much more beat up than that first specimen oh pretty same colors as a turkey wing but this is a juvenile florida fighting the juveniles have the prettiest colors well actually the adults do too i'm just going to say they're different kind of pretty because i like them all and that is a colorful moon snail actually real pretty delicate pattern on it this is a colorful moon snail oh well hi beautiful doesn't it look like a spider well that is aptly known as a spider crab and they're pretty kind of covered with goo yup so that is alive and well spider crab i didn't really want to monkey around with it let's do a check in okay there's the tide like i said nice and low negative 0.63 right now 61 degrees so it is just fine i can tolerate these kind of temperatures well hi there shark eye now what i thought was unusual about this one is the way that the discoloration is going along right with the shell pattern so that is discolored a little bit but kind of cool and here we have another one of the shelves that i tend to go gaga over this is a florida fighting conch but it's a juvenile florida fighting conch so they have really gorgeous patterns look at the stripes here and here of the gorgeous shell i know i can't help it just love these shells here we have a turkey wing is it full yes okay another nice looking zigzag arc pretty turkey wing very intact so those will always be that brown and white color always always always that is a broken apple muric's wamp womp o and beautiful florida fighting yeah of course so that is a juvenile florida fighting conch there it look at the little eyeballs oh look how cute so that's alive and well with a pretty little splash of purple and just a super pretty shell but it is not for us to take that has to stay at the beach and here is a short spine sea urchin i do like collecting these as well although i learned my lesson i try to collect the ones that don't have any guts i like the ones that are a little bit more dry because the ones that have guts are smelly and really hard to clean so this is another lightening well that also is discolored a little bit which is just weird and just in that spot so it's not like it's the whole shell just in certain areas hmm that is another lightning milk that's a little juvenile friend not too zigzaggy that's where they get their name it looks like it has zigzags on it oh aptly timed zigzag arc here so again is a turkey wing that's actually a really nice turkey wing not beat up at all you can really see all the individual little stripes on it and here is an awesome shark eye with a blue dot so that's paul newman shark eye it's a little beat up but the size is really good for the most part it's in good shape beautiful shark eye here's another pretty color kind of sticking out so that is a bay scallop and once you kind of get a better look at it it's not perfect real pretty color though but probably gonna leave that leave that for somebody else and so the water is a little bit cloudy and with it being overcast it's i'm not gonna have much luck in the water but i did bring my scoop so the scoop is really good if you don't want to get wet it's not so cold i don't mind on a day like today but if you didn't want to or the shells are kind of hard to kind of pick out of the surf just kind of flip that scooper up like that dip it into the surf pull out a pile of shells dump it onto the beach and then kind of see what you got so it is a different kind of treasure hunting looks like in this scoop i managed to find a nut mag it's an okay shape it's missing its little pointy top that's all right and that's what it looks like when you see a pile like that all right managed to get an apple muric's is it a keeper yup it's empty oh dang it's got a little hole and that's okay so i like to keep it moving just kind of explore and check out really kind of basically cover as much beach as i possibly can here's another apple muric's oh but this one is alive so that's its little operculum kind of sticking on the end of the critter there that brown that blackish dot there so that creature is alive i know the tide is coming in so i'm just gonna set that critter there lovely lovely orange calico scallop really pretty yeah sanibel does have the best scallops in my opinion and another gorgeous oh man all right so that is another really pretty one of those juvenile fighting conks oh look at the pad i mean it's just beautiful yeah buddy you got a really pretty shell and check out that orange stripe there really really cool sometimes it's hard but not yet it's not collectible yet so there was a little bit of action going on here and had this pelican and then in the background i kind of see some other pelicans and i really wanted to show you when they get their food they usually kind of scope out the area once they see what they're going to find they dive down and it's really cool but that one apparently didn't see anything so he's just going to do a nice water landing he's not going to do that diving action but there was something in the water because there were lots of creatures and i'll show you as they pop up we'll be sure to say hi and this is a hinged prickly cockle actually a particularly lovely one really nice color nice and prickly almost dropped it it's a very nice prickly cockle all right a little bit of a rack line let's see what's going on here oh cool a florida fighting and i flipped it so fast i wanted you to see that pattern i thought that was really pretty and then your usual cast of characters is here but let's see let's kind of get a closer look so you can kind of see what's here all right here is another one of those urchins that fella is alive that or gal leave it there a lightning well that's yeah it's a little bit broken so we'll leave it your ponderous ark oh he's gonna find those and then of course your usual all right that's not terribly usual that's variable worm snail a variable worm shell i should say although it is little worms that make that that shell just kind of weird and cool so it's just your usual stuff down there by the water and so i decided all right here's another rack line of stuff what's up here all right we got some pen shells so those are those dark things you'll see in the background i don't always pay attention to them but that is what they are so when you kind of see that in the background that is what is there once you kind of get a closer look of course you're gonna not of course but generally you're gonna have your giant atlantic cockles oh there's some nice urchins here okay so that's a keeper because it's empty yep in my book that is perfect i had gone out and i had found i don't remember a lot a lot of urchins and i just picked them all up and when i got home i was cleaning them for hours so now i just go for those the ones that are already kind of dried up and empty i know i i feel bad almost saying it because i can be picky since i go to the beach so much but by all means if it's got its guts and stuff you want to keep it oh look here so that's aristotle's lantern see that little white piece that's kind of stuck in there so i did see this on a different day this is aristotle's lantern looking from the top down so this is that part of the urchin it is just so symmetrical it really just kind of blows my mind at how amazing nature really can be so i'm just kind of going through these gonna keep the dry ones or at least a couple of the dry ones i'm not gonna go too crazy and then the ones that have more guts and stuff in the inside i'm going to go ahead and leave that at the beach maybe it'll dry up a little bit for somebody else to collect so i'll pick up a couple of those and see what other kind of goodies are here an operculum all right so i suspect this is an operculum from a lightning whelk so that's a little trap door that's in really great shape i'm gonna collect that more beach stuff more urchins the giant atlantic cockles and every now and then you'll see a treasure now when you see the sand kind of mixed in with the shells you know that someone else has kind of been through that area but i would say keep go look anyway you really don't know what other people are collecting and hey you know maybe they missed something so don't get discouraged you know by all means you go you check out see what kind of goodies you decide to keep there is no right or wrong way to do collecting all right so that one's on the border you know that's kind of dry and it's really pretty so i'm going to make an exception for that one what about this one dry all right fantastic what other goodies and then soon we're going to start seeing some of the egg casings on the beach so i'll be sure to show you that when the little baby snails start being born that'll be soon here's a little one so that is a little horse conch and since i dug it up out of the sand and it's packed full of sand yes i know that is a keeper no little critters or crabs stuck in there awesome great color i know it's little but really nice shell oh juvenile and i'm going to be really careful make sure there's nobody home that is another pretty little fighting conch i'm still just kind of scanning seeing if anything super special sticks out at me there's always something to check out let's see if there's anything particularly unusual or beautiful back near the water found this really pretty again juvenile cool cross on there so it's a juvenile fighting conch kind of an unusual shaped one yet another thing to admire and yeah it's it it's not gonna have much luck showing in the water but since that was so white i was able to kind of spy it but actually showing in the water today isn't going to be much of a possibility which is fine i'm finding stuff kind of close to the water in this first rack line here the more fresh stuff anything good couple slippers that's a pretty scallop a little bit of green nothing a little bleach won't take care of all right i'm gonna go back up here just in case because you never know and that's what just makes it so much fun because you just don't know you have no idea what's going to be there no idea what kind of fun things you're going to be able to find now a lot of times there is the usual cast of characters i like to say but again sometimes something really unusual will just kind of poke out so that's what makes it so much more fun it's that hunt the anticipation and not knowing what's gonna be there and it's different every time i see a particularly beautiful one yeah i'm gonna go ahead and make an exception for that too okay so here's one of the pen shells i want to show you there's a couple different types of pen shell so this one is called a sawtooth pen shell so that's one of them they get to be about nine inches i mean they get really really huge and this is another one of the varieties we have this is called a stiff pen shell so the surface of the shell is a little bit different and here we have yet another one and this one is called a half naked pen shell so those are the three most ubiquitous pen shells that we have here and been doing a lot of hunting i think it's time to go for a little walk all right it looks like i've stumbled upon a bunch of those giant atlantic cockles these are also known as heart cockles because when you hold them like so it kind of looks like a heart now the scientific name for the cockles is cardi id which refers to the heart much like cardio does so the scientific name refers to the heart shape another fun fact and that right there is another fun fighting conch although it's a little bit beat up lots of whole bunch of colors you got green you got purple some brown oh yeah some of your more giant lantern cockles so some of these species do tend to kind of hang out together so it would seem and every once in a while you're gonna get a whole bunch of the same type of shell so lots and lots of cockles i see some of the prickly cockles oh and oranges sticking out all right we have a orange calico scallop they're usually pink or purple so i'm a big fan of the orange ones a little bit more unusual whoa that's really pink okay so that is an apple muric's it just has a weird pink color and actually that live apple muric's also had that weird pink color all right looks like i decided to scoop or at least took i took my hand and i scooped and if you're gonna do this kind of do it over the sand because if you do this over the water and you drop your prize no bueno you're gonna be looking again and it looks like that this apple marix was kind of sucking on this this other shell so i wasn't really quite sure what was going on other than it was alive and i wasn't gonna be able to take it and that is just fine all right this is another one i cannot take i'm checking really good especially since it's so pretty i just assume it is alive but it's not that's actually a keeper oh and it's just gorgeous awesome juvenile fighting and there's a slipper snail it happened to be one of the bigger and more flatter ones that i've seen kind of like a little boat and yes it does float if you get that on some kind of still water that will float so that's kind of a cool slipper snail oh dear whale and there's that weird pink color again so that is a banded tulip that is quite beat up a couple barnacles very pink all right i saw a particular shell i think it might even be a juvenile florida fighting conch and i really really want it so i'm gonna fight with this water for a little while let's see if i'm victorious all right so a little message for myself from the beach i was victorious but the bad news is there was a critter in it so all that work just to say hi which is fine there's little eyeballs so i did see something quite lovely and that's another show that we cannot keep that's okay there's plenty of other ones so just kind of meandering it's kind of a pretty overcast day let's do another little chicken all right tide is coming in still 61 which doesn't surprise me the sun isn't out so it's probably gonna be one of the cooler days down here another real pretty orange calico scallop awesome and another muric's this kind of literally washed up at my feet but this one is alive so that is not a keeper oh i see a horse cunk and that is also alive so not a keeper but i did get that real pretty orange calico scallop all right yet another murics now there is a muric's called a pitted murics i don't think i've ever found one this one just reminded me of it because it was so beat up in kind of the right way but that was an apple myricks and these two are also fighting conchs and just another reason i've shown this before but just for you new people this guy on the left that's just your regular old florida fighting conch the one on the right is called knobless because it doesn't have that row of knobs on it so another one of the cool things with these shells not just the colors and the patterns but sometimes the actual variations of the way that the shell is created now i'm going to talk to you a little bit about where i parked and just it's parking on cinnabell in general so here is sanibel that is a lighthouse and that is bowman's just to kind of level set give you an idea about the island now this is a parking map you can download this i will put a link in the description below you are going to be able to download this and this is what's really going to give us the information so i am parked here this is over on gulf side city park over at algiers so that's where i am now and it is one of only five public parking lots on sanibel so there's only five places that you can park publicly here at lighthouse here where i am at gulf side city park over here at the trost parking lot here at bowman's and over there on blind pass and that's it so that is all you get bowman's has the largest parking lot of them all santa um the lighthouse is probably the most popular one so it's really hard to get parking there unless you get there early all the parking on cinnabell is five dollars an hour and then i bought a parking pass that allows me to park in those areas there and it also allows me to park at no charge because i bought the pass over at blind pass so some these are some of the areas i'm going to kind of venture out into i'm going to be spending more time over there but just to let you know you got five places to choose from to park on sanibel it's going to be five dollars an hour bowman's is the biggest lot so just to give you a little bit of information about parking if you happen to be coming here and spending some time in southwest florida so i'm still on the hunt and the tide is coming in so i'm kind of hoping it'll push things onto the beach that's what i always kind of describe it as yeah it can wash things back into the water but i like to look at it on the positive side like look at here we have a hinged yellow prickly cockle so that was pushed in by the tide pretty cool i like those shells anyway because of their color and you don't usually find them hinged so that was kind of cool look at the cutest little urchin so that little fella or gal is alive and so i'm gonna put it down a little bit closer to the water tide's coming in it'll be fine now here's another one of our feathered beach friends down here this is a snowy egret and what i wanted to show you is they have this beautiful plumage he's gonna look at his little head oh so pretty like it almost looks like feathery oh just really really beautiful so that is one of our little snowy egrets doing a little show for us and this is when i thought there was you know kind of a feeding frenzy going on here so i guess all the pelicans texted each other and said hey there's a bunch of fish here so they went a little bit wild and so the birds that you're seeing here are most of these are the brown actually all of them are brown pelicans and they're one of florida's largest birds they have a wingspan that can go up to seven feet it's huge and the birds typically they dive for fish so they go up kind of like we saw before they kind of check out then they'll do a dive and they'll kind of scoop the stuff up in their bill they usually kind of hang out on the beach but more likely kind of on sandbars and places that are away from people on the mangrove and the coastal islands so those are some of our very fun other feathered friends that we get to see down here as we enjoy the beach and one other thing i just wanted to quickly mention i am typically out on the beach for hours and so i cut down all the little shots that i take to make a nice video i don't want you to think that i show up at the beach and just start picking up things because it doesn't really work like that i edit it so there's not a lot of quote unquote down time here is a lightning walk that's a little bit beat up but i do believe me i spend lots of time here and that's why i get to see so many different critters and creatures because i do spend a lot of time when i'm down at the beach now here we see bottlenose dolphins and i was super excited because i have not seen these guys for months now the bottom nose dolphin usually eats a wide variety of food inclu including crustaceans fish squid and each adult dolphin can eat between 15 and 30 pounds of food a day so they eat a lot so that's probably what they're doing right now really kind of hustling for their food they don't chew their food they kind of just grab it and swallow it so they are they are carnivores for sure the common bottlenose dolphins can grow up to 13 feet long they can also weigh up to 1300 pounds and these bottlenose dolphins can also live between 40 and 60 years oh so cool speaking of cool look at that that is an alphabet cone i know it's a little broken but these are still really fabulous shells to find so i'm still happy with that even though it's broken i can hold it you know just kind of sew and it'll be just fine so i'm going to hold on to that delightful alphabet cone and here is another cone and guess what it cleans up so good way better than the one we just picked up believe it or not so hang around to the very very end i want to show you that and we also have a little florida cone that's a little beat up but that alphabet cone very cool so there's another shot not able to do much in the water much to my sugar in because that is my favorite place but between the clouds and the lack of sunlight it's really tough to kind of see what's going on there so i've been spending most of my time up on the beach which is just fine saying hi to a bunch of critters finding a couple of shells like this guy and this is a serif and they're always going to be this shape sometimes the colors vary a little bit they're going to be brown and white it's going to have those little bumpy beaded texture to it and then that is another juvenile fighting conch of the orange variety very nice bright pretty shell there's always something to check out to be fair it's usually much more fun after really big storm but it's not so bad when you kind of slow down and take your time to go through things and i saw this little message and i'm gonna have to agree i think 2022 is going to be an awesome year so let's let's hear it for 2022. so this is what the parking kiosk will look like when you go to those parking stations you'll see it is five dollars an hour you pay here you put a little ticket on your dashboard and if you happen to come to this particular parking area it does have some nice signage kind of gives you a heads up on some of the birds you may see some of the fun things you may find on the beach and it also has a covered pavilion just in case you're here in the summer and you're wondering whether or not you can have your peanut butter and jelly in shade yes you can and it also has outdoor showers water fountain and facilities so that is gonna wrap up our time here on the beach it was fun i was here a while and i did manage to find a couple of fun things so let's take a look those are the urchins i decided to keep i have a little only a little bit more cleaning to do because i was selective in the urchins i kept i did get some of those fighting some of those cockles we got some of those real pretty scallops can't resist if you're over in sanibel got a couple of those turkey wings i got one apple mirrors one slipper some real nice juvenile fighting i got that colorful moon snail the nutmeg and then those are my favorites the lightning walk the horse the two moon snails the alphabet cones and that one juvenile that i could keep now let's take a look at that alphabet cone tada so that is soaked in 100 bleach and all that stuff picked off that's it so that red stuff is not a stain or at least it's not too much of a stain that the bleach won't come out well all in all i'm going to say that there was a successful trip to the beach and i want to give a big shout out to my patreons who monetarily support me so thank you so very much and i'm going to use some of those funds to go on a trip next week with real kind and i'm going to an island called shell island so it's going to be pretty awesome hope you have a fantastic week i'll see you again next sunday