"For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea."
~e.e. cummings
First, let me show you our finds from yesterday! We found most of these in the tidal pool with light digging around pen shells. Notice we both picked up an angel wing!!
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| Hubby's finds |
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| My Finds |
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| All together! |
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| Nice Big Angel wing! |
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| Hubby got a nice King's crown!! |
Today was another beautiful day, we got up before the sun so we could greet it walking along the gulf. We headed down toward Sundial (East) so we could be at the tidal pool today as it got uncovered by the ultra low tide. We immediately found pen shells and started carefully moving them, (while checking inside them) and found a few little pretties, banded tulips, apple murex etc.
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| Hubby worked here and that's my pile in the back!! |
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| A closer look at the inspected pen shells |
We moved down a little and found a place that had pen shells that were buried, and obviously had been for a while. It's only in about 6 or 8 inches of water. I immediately spotted one of my favorites, horse conchs, 3 of them, alas they were alive.
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| This is my favorite size too...isn't it beautiful?? |
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| But it was alive so it had to be carefully placed back into the water!! :( |
We started checking each pen shell and they were absolutely LOADED with juvenile fighting conchs, and everywhere we dug we would find them!! There must have been thousands of every size and color you could imagine!! They were all dead, though some still had the meat in them and had to be carefully flushed out!! They must have gotten trapped and died there!! We dug there for a couple of hours, I did the Sanibel Stoop for a while, then the Sanibel Squat and finally just plopped down and did the Sanibel Sit!! Hubby had enough and headed back down toward the car to work on another area and I stayed put for a while....we never scratched the surface! For the first time ever I got tired of finding shells!!!
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| I worked the clear area on the right, Hubby on the left |
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| Those in the middle weren't even touched....That will be a job for tomorrow if we can find them again!! |
They were all mini fighting conchs, with a murex every so often....I could not imagine that I would get tired of them, I kept thinking I would find something else....but I didn't and never finished looking in an area any bigger than about 3 foot square! It was amazing!! I will go back tomorrow to the same place, and try in that center area!!
On the way back I started noticing the patterns in the sand that the live olive trails made, how cool would these be if you 'jazzed' the pictures up using different colors or even tried to spell out words and put them on the wall in matching frames?! They were just awesome!!
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| Here is an SI for Sanibel island!! |
Just about the time we got to where we would head in toward the car, I noticed some movement on the sand! Look what it is!! Another first for me...a Seahorse!! He was obviously distressed and needed to be put back into the water so after snapping a few quick pictures I walked out fairly deep to put him back in!! I just can't tell you how fantastic that is to me!! I think of seahorses like unicorns, that they are just fantasies....this one was real and alive....so, so Awesome!! I am still so excited! My Seahorse picture and decorations at our condo in Ft. Myers now take on a whole new meaning!! ....Just Awesome!! :)
More tomorrow!!
::Hugs::
Cheri
