Shop owners who sell sea shells by the seashore are not going to have a profitable day when nature coughs them up for free.
“Oh, how cute,” said Rose Diehl, who was spooning through a pile of shells three feet high along the beach at North Jetty Park in Venice earlier this week. “I’m looking for the perfect shells. Perfect. A lot of them are broken. But they're there.”
Call them shell beds, shell benches, or shell piles. The colorful rows of shells extending for quite some distance are a natural phenomenon that is, actually, not that rare.
Special enough, however, to bring dozens of shell lovers to the sandy beaches near Venice Inlet when the mass of shells do pile up ashore.
Venice Beach is known far better for the massive amount of shark teeth that can be found in the shallows. But shells, millions of them, rule this day.
“These little ones I make sure that they're perfect and I put them around the base of wine glasses, and then I resin over them and I give them out to my girlfriends,” Diehl said. “They're actually very cute.”
Why here, why now?
A seashell found on the beaches was home to something that once lived in it, and after whatever it is dies, its empty shell joins all the others carried by waves and currents. Some shells are broken to pieces by wave action. Others are buried shallow in the sea bed. Many shells just float around until something happens.
That something is usually bad weather, such as Hurricane Idalia that swept by in late August. Or a particularly rough afternoon shower during the summer. Sometimes, shells wash ashore en masse for no apparent reason.
Such an accumulation of seashells is a natural process and an integral part of the coastal ecosystem.
There is a relatively shallow seabed adjacent to Florida's Gulf of Mexico coastline, a plateau of sorts that makes it possible for shells to be tumbled or floated up onto the beach.
The gradual slope of this plateau, combined with the Gulf's currents and wave actions, can bring shells and other marine debris to the shores. Venice Beach, and to its north Manasota and Casey keys, benefit seashell-wise from these geographical and oceanographic forces.
Venice Beach is renowned as the "Shark's Tooth Capital of the World" due to the abundance of fossilized shark teeth that wash ashore, a process born of the same underwater forces.
No Match for 'Sanibel-Captiva'
Shellers in the greater Venice Beach area may benefit from the benevolent underwater undercurrents, but not nearly as often as those on Sanibel and Captiva islands to the south, which are world-famous shelling beaches.
They are separate spits of sandy land that locals pronounce as one:
"Where are you going?"
"Sanibel-Captiva. To go shelling."
"Oh, OK. I'll see you down there later."
"Where?"
"Sanibel-Captiva."
"Oh yeah. OK."
Like all the barrier islands off Florida's Gulf Coast, they were formed over thousands of years by the action of waves and currents.
Barrier islands have a specific job in nature, which is to protect what's between them and the mainland. That ecosystem is usually a shallow bay, its bottom filled with seagrass meadows, which are nurseries for juvenile fish and fast-food outlets for seagrass-eating manatees. The bay's waters teem with fish. Or at least they used to.
The bays also contain sandbars, which are wanna-be barrier islands that play hide-and-seek matching the tidal rhythm. Sandbars are the visible part of shoals that track with the movement of ever-fidgety inlets, which if not armored with rocks or sea walls, migrate north-south, north-south, over centuries — and are yet-another fragile ecosystem barrier islands protect.
The sea floor off the coast of Sanibel and Captiva islands is also part of the broad Gulf plateau, gradually rising from deeper waters. When shells are discarded by marine organisms, they get caught up in the Gulf's currents.
Due to the plateau's gentle slope, the shells don't roll down into deep waters but are gradually pushed toward the islands by waves and tidal action. Just like Venice-area barrier islands - but at Sanibel Island there is a literal twist that makes a huge difference: 90 degrees.
Sanibel Island has a unique east-west orientation, unlike most barrier islands that lay north-south. That 90-degree difference means Sanibel Island acts like a scoop capturing shells brought in by Gulf currents.
Sanibel and Captiva islands are known for the wide variety of shells found on their beaches, including conchs, whelks, coquinas, and sand dollars. These islands have become havens for shell enthusiasts known as "shellers."
Venice works, too
Rose Diehl, still spooning through the pile of shells at North Jetty Park in Venice earlier this week, was joined by her daughter, Deanna Diehl, who was visiting from New York.
Rose Diehl said she stays combing through the shells with a wooden spoon, or her hands, for hours every time a storm, or the just-right tide, washes the shell mounds in.
“We put them around picture frames,” she said. “We do everything with the shells.”
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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