'Seashelling' or 'Shelling' What is it? And Does it Cause Any Harm?

I don't know about any of you, but I didn't know the term for this before I started looking into the subject. I couldn't find a definition for this online, but it is the act of finding and collecting sea shells on the beach often with some notion to also bringing them home.

As I’m sure we can all relate, at one point or another we’ve been to the beach and found a shell or two… or more realistically 10 that really caught our eye that we were excited to take home. I’ve done it, and I’ve done it more than a few times. I’ve even collected seashells this year before I looked into it more. This subject only really came up for me because I (shellfish-ly) selfishly or unselfishly thought it would be a nice touch to include some seashells in my packages of earring orders. I thought it would be a nice detail that would really add to the experience of receiving and opening your orders, sort of the 'mermaid vibe' most of us want to get behind. When I started thinking about it, and how many orders I would be putting through and how many shells I would need to collect to do so, it made me think, “hmm… I wonder if this causes any issues, taking so many shells from the ocean?” I’ve had in the back of my head for years to not to take 'too many shells'; to make sure that anything I took didn’t have anything living in it. I thought to only take shells really high on the shore because it was likely no marine life would be able to use them anyway, so it wouldn’t matter. That was the gist of what I knew but I didn’t know the answer to my new question.

Which lead me to Google, where I’ve come to find that overall taking a shell or two every so often might not be a big deal with devastating, long-term effects, it does still affect the animals that rely on these shells and that this action isn’t fully without consequences. I hadn’t really thought about it prior to spending so much time at the beach, but there are so many different organisms that really do need the support of these shells.

I don’t want to sound like a party-pooper, think of me more like a really fun and casual person who is just presenting these topics for us to all think about and discuss together! Really, the best thing that we can all do to support marine life and the animals that live near the water is to;

1. Take pictures of these gorgeous shells instead and leave them where they are

2. Not litter

3. Pick up garbage we see

4. Look into the types of products we use everyday when we're in the shower or putting things down our kitchen sinks and make sure they are ocean-friendly

Crabs need shells all their lives to protect their fragile and sensitive bodies from all kinds of things. As they age and grow they need bigger and bigger shells which are in and around the water but there are lots of other creatures that need these shells to hide in or behind, and birds that use parts of shells or whole shells for nests for their eggs and soon to be fledglings.

Another thing I read is that technically taking anything from the beach, like sand or shells is illegal because these beaches are public property, meaning that they belong to the public and that we as individuals have no right to remove these things from the beach. Of course there are exceptions to this rule and it's a rule most of us break. From what I found from the the New York Post and Business Insider, is that some of the biggest issues in terms of beach related thievery is related to sand. There have been cases in 2017 and 2018 of people getting fined thousands of dollars for attempting to remove large quantities of sand, from Hawaii, Italy and Greece and their famous white rocks.

Let's get back on topic here, shells one of my favourite topics that I am very excited to talk about

**As a reminder this is not an academic paper or anything more than a blog post, by an individual with no real background on this subject. Most of my knowledge from what I’ve been told, books I've previously read, and my own experiences unless otherwise credited **

1. How are shells made?

2. How long does it take for a shell to decompose, or do shells decompose? And so much more!

1. Shells are made or formed by the animals that need these shells with the help of the salt in the water combined with the food they eat. Like eggshells, seashells are made mostly of calcium carbonate. Over their lifetime these creatures contribute layers and layers of this calcium carbonate to form these hard, protective layers that make up their shell. Mollusks ( in the family of clams and slugs) for example only live in the one shell they’ve made for their entire lives. Like how we grow our own hair or fingernails, it's a similar idea. Although if you really think about it, these shells are really the exoskeletons of very small, relatives of the snails and clams. The reason that shells are different colours is because of the differences in temperatures of the water that the animal is in as well as the type of food at that that animal has consumed. Animals that live in warmer waters, tend to have brighter shells because the food they eat tends to be brighter coloured. If you’ve ever wondered why flamingos are pink it’s for this same reason, the food they eat is mostly comprised of shrimp which is pink, hence the saying we hear so often that doesn’t really feel like applies to humans, 'you are what you eat!' For our purposes, it would apply to some animals as, 'You are the colour you eat! Which would be a more accurate expression.

2. This is very technical. First the word 'decompose' is not really the right word to use as it refers to something that was once living, dying or having the ability to die. These exoskeletons cannot die as they were not alive in the first place. But over time they do break down. There are so many factors for this process, like the thickness of the shell, the size of the shell, the type of shell and other environmental factors, so there is no definitive answer but from the National Ocean Service (NOS), it sounds like it can take a very long time, many years.

The reason I bring up the question of decomposition is because I'm sure like me, some other people have thought about taking the broken shells since they probably can't be of as much use as the whole shells are. And I've come to find that to not be entirely true either, darn! There are many purposes and uses for the smaller shells or broken pieces of shells. Worse case scenario they will be used for and by many of the organisms along the beach in some capacity or they will naturally over time, break down.

I really hope this conversation has sparked an interest in you wanting to learn more on the subject, (from credible/ qualified sources, that are not me)

Thanks so much for reading. Talk soon!

-Sarah