I wanted all the shells but I had to leave many behind. Let's meet empty and live snails!

Hello beach friends. Today is one of those beach days that makes my heart sing. Very messy beach, plenty of beautiful seashells, a few critters including some big old horse cocks and other live creatures and I have a sneaky feeling it's gonna be a really fun day out on the beach. Now I'm a relatively serious sheller so I was out here before the sun came up and I do have high hopes because of some high winds we had experienced the day before. So I'm hoping for a great day out here on Sanibel. Now I'm not really a fan of using the headlamp but what else am I gonna do out here on the beach until the sun comes up? It just I like to be able to see. Call me crazy but this headlamp does you know an okay job. I can at least see what's directly in front of me. It appears to be a live sand dollar and I do have some seaweed here. So low tide is coming up in a little bit. It's 43. It's a little chilly out. I am wearing I think three or four coats because it is a little cold and I think some of these animals are a little cold too. Now here is our state shell the Florida horse conch. Yeah I see the animal's body. Yep that or that bright orange that's its body. Gorgeous. The animal's not quite done with its seashell yet. Beautiful animal though. I just love being able to coat. Yeah just incredible. Look at the size. So that's for size. Just kind of showing you. Yeah it's a pretty big shell. It's with all the new shellers. Myself included wanted to get a horse conch. It is the largest sea snail in North America. What do we have here? Oh another one. Okay now this one's interesting. It's in a different position. We can see it's operculum. It's kind of sitting here. Okay again first. Should I do that? I don't know. This it feels a little more protected like that. I don't actually know but that's what I decided to do. All right oh wow what a beautiful morning it's gonna be here. Yeah oh we have another horse conch. Okay so clearly there is a couple of them. These appear. Wow okay we can kind of like see its head there. They're so funny looking because you can't really see what's going on. I mean they're meant to be under the water kind of moving around and frankly it's hard to film that. Well for me anyway. So strangely enough it's called a horse conch but it is actually not a conch. It is the scientific name is the triplophosus gigantes and it's actually a member of the tulip family. Here's a tulip we have here. Abandoned tulip. Yeah it's a little that's a little rough. I'm gonna leave that here next to its other tulip friend. Yeah we'll let them all hang out together. Really neat. All right so yay those winds did something. At least we got to see some live horse conchs. Oh I can't wait to see what else is out here. Oh beautiful sunrise. Hopefully it'll be one of those real pretty ones. All right what do we got? All right a live abandoned tulip. Yeah when you shell in the water there's a good chance you're gonna find some of those live critters and the critters that aren't quite done with their shells yet. And speaking of critters we are going to see a couple of critters today. One that I've never been able actually two that I've never seen before which is kind of cool. And of course there will be seashells. Any of the empty ethically collected beauties I find will be coming home with me. So if you're ready to see what all is out there for us today let's go to the beach. Yeah not a bad view. Not a bad way to start a morning. So Sanibel the way it's kind of positioned it might look like there's actual um just an ocean but there's land way out in the distance. There's land there. And here's another big old horse conch. Yeah it's funny not that long ago just a couple days ago I was thinking about um an event where I saw all these horse conchs on Dickman's Island and they were all just kind of like standing straight up. And I was thinking about that because I haven't seen that since. But that might that might change today because it got a little bit cooler. So this is a first it's a little bit cold. It's not that big cold front that came through recently. So this is from January. Yeah I think those critters are cold. So for whatever reason they tend to kind of stand up out of the sand and that is supposedly a little bit warmer for them. And that's what so that's what these horse conchs are doing. Another one yeah. I like to see if I can okay kind of see ahead looks like maybe there's some little tentacles there. I like to see I rarely can really tease out you know eyes or a head or anything. It's hard when you're you know you don't have any skeletons you're just squish you're just goo. And technically they'd be more what fluid underwater. I mean that's where they're supposed to be living. Oh there's a sand dollar waiting for the tide to come back in. It's actually still going out right now. Another horse conch and another yeah they are dotting the beach. They're all over the beach. Oh that's fun. Yep and I'm kind of used to it at this point ish. I mean I haven't seen this for many years but I have seen it before. Really cool right that kind of looks like the head there. Kinda. If your head looked like two little like floppy things like you know. It's not looking like a traditional head with ears and eyeballs. Another animal. Yep another horse conch. And some of these that one oh that's the size I love. We call it like a pony. Yeah it's alive and well. Well alive and cold. Yeah there's gonna be a little bit of shell envy today for me. There's gonna be a couple of shells I wish I could take home. Fighting conch. I'm gonna take you. You're fine. Nobody's in you. Perfectly. Perfectly ethically safe to collect that fighting conch. And this lightning welk. So yeah that's the deal here. It is illegal to collect live specimens on Sanibel. That's not why I don't do it. I just think it's super not cool to collect animals and murder them for shells. Call me crazy. So this is an empty banded tulip. There's actually a little mark on that. I'm going to talk about that in an upcoming episode. The business of a jingle. So I know. I know. I know you're not gonna be able to wait. Mark it on your calendar. I don't know exactly when that'll be. A couple weeks I think. So there's a pair welk. Gorgeous. Beautiful color on it. And it's funny because the animal is white. Why is that funny? Because all the other ones seem to be dark. So I just think it's different that the uh that animal is white. The apple murix. They're kind of like what we should see. It's actually really hard to see the animal of an apple murix. Scallop. Excellent. All right. So I'm just going to take the one valve. There seems to be like oysters or something going on the other valve. So I'm just going to snag that one. So that's a calico scallop. All right. Yeah that was a live um apple murix. It just looks like goo with an operculum stuck to the end of it. That's pretty much what a live apple murix looks like. Here is an empty banded tulip. Lovely. That's lovely. Just terrific. The phylo. No that's not it. That is a centura hunteria. That is beautiful is what that is. And it's occupied. Oh yeah. Yeah. It would grow up to be something like that. That little orange shell. What do we got here? Is this pink guy? Yeah it's a scallop. See ones like that I don't know if the scallop. I don't know what's going on. I don't know if it's unalive or not. So I leave it. So anything me personally in question I leave. Now something like this is so exciting. So it's a true tulip and we get to see it. And everybody that comes to the beach will get to enjoy seeing that lovely snail. Empty scallop. Terrific. Yep. I'll snag that. Oh a paper fig. That is one of Sanibel's I would say iconic per se. But when I think paper fig I do think Sanibel. That is a lovely paper fig. Now this is really cool because it is a limpet but it's alive. I've never seen a living limpet before. Now technically kind of like a slipper. They would be attached to some sort of rock or some sort of substrate. So that poor creature. Yeah that's why it looks all gummy like that. It's supposed to be attached to something and it's not. It was just kind of like hanging out in the sand. Oh that was neat. Really really cool. All right let me see if I can find you something to attach to little limpet. Oh that's so cool. What a pen shell. There you go. How about that? Good luck. Good luck little limpet. All right what do we have? Oh little yep a little living fighting conch. That's going to stay here. Is this the one? I think this is the one. So this is a living apple myrix. Look at the shell. It's purple. Now Tyrian purple was the color all way back when the big you couldn't go to the store and you know buy purple dye. So they would smash up a bunch of apple myrix shells and or snails and extract that purple color. I've never seen a shell that was really that purple. I've got some serious shell envy with that one big time. Oh man that is cool. But again animal's not done with the shell so it stays here at the beach. Not really a hard rule. Sometimes it is but I'm picking up the shell like oh man I really want you and I'm going to show you a couple of them today. So this is a ribbed cantharis. I would love that shell. I would but yeah there's a creature in there. So the ribbed cantharis is not done. There you go friend. Now there is a red like a reddish orange morph of that shell I will show you. Give me a little bit of a heartbreaker for me. Okay what do we got? Is it true tulip? Look at that. All right so that is a true tulip. It is truly beautiful. We'd call that like the chocolate version not the fire engine one. Oh it's so cool. So that is a gorgeous true tulip. Beautiful. What do we got? What am I zeroing in? Oh the shark eye. I see you. Nice. Oh yes. Now I'm kind of I can't exactly tell if it's got like a little like layer of slime on it. I can't quite tell but love the size. That is a false shark eye. Yeah it's kind of got that like groove in it. Very cool. Big old moon snail. Shark eye moon snail. So all okay I see it. You see the spots? Let's say all shark eyes are moon snails. Not all moon snails are shark eyes. That is an alphabet cone and really I was pretty pretty obviously tickled and very surprised. I don't think I've found a cone that wasn't on Key Weeden in a long time. Well hello Sanibel alphabet cone. Oh a sharp ribbed drill. Yeah oh it's so pretty. I do love a good sharp ribbed drill and sometimes hermit crabs do too. Yeah so yep not a keeper for me. A little creature in there. Get a great home. Good taste little crab. That's cool. Oh maybe I'll just take this one. Oh nope. Not empty. Not keepable. All right so it's a little true tulip. Another one. I know it didn't have like those lines on it but the shape and the color so it makes it a true tulip. All right what's up next? Whether it be critter or shell. Oh this is fun. Oh look at the color. I want that shell. I really want it but there's an animal in it so it stays here. Oh man. All right well I get this one. So I didn't get that orange banded tulip but this is a lovely calico scallop of the orange variety. So that'll do. Oh there's a scallop and I'm kind of circling my prey except I don't want to hurt it. I just want to film it. So we have a live calico scallop and you can see its little blue eyeballs and then you can kind of see like those little tentacles. So they filter feed and they've got gills in there somewhere and there's a little cilia and when it detects any of the little phytoplankton or little tiny critters in the water it kind of pushes that water over its gills. Eats the little thing so it's filtering the water. Good job. Oh my god. Good job calico scallop. That is a what I would consider like a fire engine red true tulip and animal is not done with it. And just fun that especially at least here on Sandoval the people are so respectful and we all just look at the live animals and just keep it moving. It's wonderful. It's really it's it's a very cool experience. Wow look at that. So that is a true tulip. Wow look at the color on that. Now that was safe. It wasn't in the water. I'm going to talk about that in a little bit. So that was there was nobody in that shell. That was an empty shell. Oh we have lots of beach to look at. Oh no. All right so critter. Yeah so short spined sea star. I you know it's pliable so I just don't know and I tend to um again on the safety side of the critter so we'll just I don't know if it's alive or I just don't know. So I'm just gonna leave it here and wish my little sea star friend luck. Okay what else is in this little gully? Oh live horse conch, lightning walk, horse conch, sea star, probably a true tulip, banded tulip. What else we got? Yep banded tulip but this one's empty. There we go. Lovely the cintura hunteria. You know I'm not a fan of these the cold and the cold snaps but boy do I like what it does to the beach. Okay so this is alive but check this out. So the lightning walk will sometimes use the edge of its shell to kind of pry open clams and other things and sometimes it will break just like that. So I know as a collector I really wish they wouldn't do that but it is what it is. Oh here's a little urchin and I've, you can kind of tell by the weight of the urchin if it's alive or not alive and this guy other than it holding a shell feels pretty good. It feels a little bit heavier so the live ones are a little bit heavier. Oh I want you so bad but you're alive. I love that orange color. You don't need to, there you go, that's better. You were climbing up the beach. Nope and it's alive too. We're climbing up the little seawall here. Okay wow more horse conchs. So cool. Yeah they're just chilling, literally. Now this little adorable crab, can you stand it? So I think this is a spineback hairy crab. Look how cute he is. He's furry. I want to put a barrette on and there's another one. Look at, now that other one it looks a little tarantula-y. I know a little bit. Oh I'm blowing bubbles. I think it's adorable. It's a little hairy crab. Very cool. I've never seen that before. Never seen it and that weird thing, that's a tunicate, that's uh like probably uh sea pork or sea liver. That purplish looking thing. Oh that was neat. I don't know what that red stuff is. It kind of pops up now and then. I have no idea what it is. Another time. Now these guys are holding hands. Look you've got one, the little uh tinted cantharis. One abandoned tulip. They're holding hands. No cute. Probably not. They're probably battling it out but for the little interaction we got to see, I'm gonna go with cute. Well hello empty apple murix. Oh you're pretty. That is lovely. Phylonotus palmum. Apple murix. There you go. What live thing do we have here? All right. Gulf oyster drill. That looks, the animal looks like the uh the limpet. It's kind of like that tan color. All right. I don't know what the body of a uh slipper snail looks like. They're always attached to something. Now this, this shell, this snail, this is a ribbed cantharis. That orange red color. This is just glorious. It's killing me. It's killing me on the inside a little bit. Yep it is alive. I'm gonna leave it here and that way other people get to enjoy it and then one day hopefully when the animal is done with its shell someone will get to collect it but there shall be no shell before its time or at least not in my book, not in my world. Another. Oh it's empty. Oh that's a true tulip of the orange variety. Lovely. All right. They're not as impressive, quite frankly, as like the bright red ones but still a very handsome true tulip. Cool. Another scallop. Thank you seagulls. Oh that's great. Thank you very much. Yep. Yeah the seagulls they do like those scallops. It's like a buffet after these storms. Lovely calico scallops. Oh an albino prickly cockle and a regular old prickly cockle. Neato. So yeah this looks like it's kind of sticking its tongue out but that is its foot. That's how it kind of moves around. Cool. The animals look the same. So is there truly an albino? I'm gonna go down that rabbit hole. We'll talk about that another time. Yep this is wonderful. So it's funny I wonder what like in my mind's eye a beautiful beach is like white sand. Okay yep a little crab in that tinted canthar has some palm trees. For me this is a beautiful beach. Chunky, messy, a couple little critters, couple shells. Oh that's a critter all right. So the apomyr... it's just like goo. Yeah that's an apomyrix. Oh man there's another one of those orange banded tulips. All right what else? I mean really I can't complain. There's been so many great shells. Oh another pear whelk. Nice. Usually when the shells get bigger they kind of lose color so it's nice to get a little bit bigger of a shell and it still has some of that color on it. Lovely. It's scanning scanning. Oh apomyrix. So I am wearing waterproof boots so I'm walking around in the water. I don't think I have my I think yeah I don't think I have my water shoes on. It was in the 40s. Yeah I definitely did have my water shoes on. I had some boots on so that's why I'm in the water. My feet are dry. There's those horse conchs trying to warm up. Oh that's actually a lightning whelk that first one. Yeah it's really neat you know and people just walking around leaving them there which was amazing. I love Sanibel. All right fighting conch. Yep with the little crab in it but this time so that's going to either be a very small giant red hermit crab or a blue-eyed hermit crab. Can't tell which. It's very unfriendly. It's not cooperating and that's okay. I didn't give it the memo that I'd be coming by so you do you hermit crab. That is just fine. There's plenty of other creatures for us to play with. Oh see now this is a dimpled hermit crab. Now the dimpled hermit crab I have no idea what it looks like because I've only ever seen the claws. It just doesn't come out. I bet you it's very handsome. No at any rate I'm gonna leave that here and I'm gonna go check out what is at the water's edge here. I haven't been here. This is typically where I spend most of my time unless of course there's not many seashells here in which case you'll find me back in the mess or wherever the shells are. All right it's a little sparse but it sure is pretty so I think it's high time for me to be quiet and for you to enjoy some beach time. Now as I was filming that I was kind of scanning the ground and there wasn't all that much out there so I want to go back where I might have to meet a couple critters or you know check out a couple of full shells before I get an empty one. Now this a little bit of a heartbreaker for me. So this is a Tampa turid and there's a little hermit crab in it. So a Tampa turid but can't collect it. There it is. Yep not even a Sanibel turid. That would have been a little bit more appropriate wouldn't it? But that's what I get for shelling in the water so that's okay. All right but dead low tide at this point. 43 that's fine. Look at my glory right now. Banded tulip. Oh this is wonderful. Now the black shells that's been buried for a while. Isn't that pretty? So it's looking like a rough scallop to me and yeah so it's got to kind of get buried and cooked. I love them or any kind of weird shell really. That's probably I mean that's got to be empty right? Yeah yep. Apple myricks. Yep just there's some sand in there. Sand's okay. Perfectly safe. Lovely apple myricks. Now if the tide were up this entire area would be underwater but if you're a newer sheller and you're kind of worried about checking the shells or maybe your eyesight isn't great, shell in the upper rack lines away from the water because those you're going to have a much higher likelihood of finding shells that are empty. So that's just one little tip if you want to you know be critter friendly just to make sure. Shell on the upper rack lines. It's not where I like to shell so I like to say hi to the creatures anyway. So this is a tinted, no a ribbed cantharis and it's empty because I'm kind of a little bit closer up on the beach. So gorgeous empty. I get one. It's not that bright red orange one but at least I get to have a ribbed cantharis and a shark eye. Come on really? There was a lot of great shells today. Very cool. I like the bigger ones and if it has a blue eye even better. Nah it's just a regular got a little regular old shark eye. Still fun. I wouldn't shake a stick at that. That's awesome. Oh okay so there's a prickly cockle trying to move around and you see it's two siphons kind of sticking out. Oh and we have some siphonal tentacles too but can you please look at the wental trap directly next to it with the little hermit crab in it. I can't. I just can't. Oh so cute. Yep. Oh big old horse conch. Oh it's wonderful. A hinged buttercup leucine. I do like them if they're very bright orange. Yeah and it looks like a shark eye. So the shark eye drills a hole that is countersunk so you can kind of tell if a shark guy drilled that hole. So gorgeous buttercup leucine with a bonus drill hole. All right more live tulips. Live lightning whelk. Live tulip. Live horse conch. There's big old lightning whelk. Big lightning whelks too. Oh so fun. But I've been kind of shelling the same area. Yep and there's a little committee. A little snail committee. So I've just been kind of going up and down this like little gully here because that's really where it seems all the shells are really concentrated. I wonder if that's that seems uh the same sea star I put in the water earlier. So yep that did seem to be where the majority of the shells were. So yeah I was just kind of going back and forth there but I think at this point I'm kind of winding down my day here. What do we got? Oh so here is a Tampa turret that is empty. Thank you Sanibel. I think you're right. I think everything that has a critter in it should stay at the beach. You should only take empty shells. I know I'm really kind of hammering it on this video but I just I've been having a lot of talks with people lately about the live shelling. Oops no worries it's right here and it just really bothers me. So I got a couple feelers out on stuff like that too. See look at that. I mean that's not a shell. I don't really have to worry about somebody removing that from the beach or do I. So that is a calico box crab and of crabs they they really they got pretty beat up. Oh you have company. There you go sweetheart. So there you go. Yeah they kind of got beat up some of those crabs. So yeah be nice be nice to the critters. Yeah tide's starting to kind of come in at this point. And would you look and that just goes to show you if you're not the first one shelling or there's tons of people around who cares. You never know what their skill level is what they're looking for. Here we have an apple an apple an alphabet cone. It should not be it really really should not be here but yet here it is. Pretty cool. Here's some eggs. So that's from a true tulip and so it attached itself to I don't know what. Is that a piece of shell or something? Yeah. So those in order to be viable should be in the water. Theoretically it should be underwater and if you look inside those little cones those are the little snails. Now some snails start with their little seashells like these and like if they're in an egg casing they're going to have a little seashell and some are like larva. The um let's see moon snails and fighting conchs they definitely are larva. Banded tulip they will have a little shell with them. They have a kind of similar looking egg casing. It's a little different but looks similar. So this was really fun. I'm glad that the wind finally paid off. There have been days where it's been really windy and I've gone to the beach and there was nothing and that that's well it's always kind of a bummer when that happens but not today. Today was great. All the creatures I got to say hi to. A couple of seashells. Yep really great day here on Cinnabelle and there was just a tiny bit of garbage so I did pick up a little bit of plastic. I love getting plastic off the beach. Oh I hate the idea of the critters with the plastic. So I picked up 3.75 ounces which isn't a lot but when you combine it over time I've removed a little over 85 pounds of garbage from our beaches as well as a couple of seashells like these apple murrex. There's some banded tulips, some giant Atlantic cockles, some fighting conchs. Yeah I kind of I do like a fighting conch. There is a lettered olive, a couple of urchins, some horse conchs, some worm snails, a paper fig, moon snails, buttercup lucines, and pear whelks. Looks like there's that one uh cantharis that's uh rib cantharis, some lightning whelks, true tulips, and then a bunch of beautiful calico scallops. And then my favorites today were the empty tampaturi, that beautiful true tulip, the two true tulips really, the two alphabet cones, and then that big old shark eye. So that was really fun. Again just the critters, the shells, all of it. Look how beautiful that is. So many colors and this would not be possible if I did not have people like my Patreons supporting me every week. So again thank you. Does not seem like it's enough, it really doesn't, but thank you. I did post a picture, I do try to post content on the Patreon page when I can, just a little bit extra content. So thank you very very very much for supporting me. And I hope everyone has been able to stay warm. I know throughout the country we've been getting a lot of cold weather and snow. I haven't quite caught up with my videos to that coldness and that is coming. Next week, really fun video, fun experience, not so much the water in my boots, but I'll tell you all about it next week. And until then, I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll see you again next Sunday.