Sea Urchin Tests

Among all of the thousands of starfish on the beach are several Sea Urchin tests. The test is the shell-like portion of the urchin left when it dies. This one is, I think, a Purple Sea Urchin, even though the spines look black when you find one whole on the beach. The purple spine is a very dark purple. This dead starfish had it clasped tightly and I had to work to free it.
I'm assuming that the reason I found several of the tests is that the starfish had eaten them - a final meal, so to speak.
When alive, the urchin has neele-tipped spines covering the test.Most of the space inside the test of a sea urchin is devoted to storing unfertilized eggs. When the eggs are ripe, the female will shed hundreds of thousands of eggs. These are considered a delicacy in Japan and Greece, and are sold like ice cream in the Barbados.
The test is very, very fragile and so it is always fun to find an unbroken one.

Sand Dollars

Sand Dollars (the true name for these is "Keyhole Urchin") are fairly plentiful on the Isle of Palms, but are basically clustered in 2 places: around 52nd Ave in front of a hot pink house and further up towards the end of the island.. The ones at 52nd are typically already whitish and can usually only be found at low tide. If you're willing to walk in the water, you can often find 10-15 in one walk. The ones found further north, almost at the end of the island, tend to be alive. It is against the law to take a live sand dollar in SC, so when one is found, you need to turn it over and check to see if spines are moving. If not, it is dead and can be taken from the beach.

Sand Dollars are wedged/buried beneath the sand in beds which are parallel to the beach. The green-brown spines on the underneath are used for digging and are very short and the 5 petals on the top are hollow and used for breathing. The enemies of the Sand Dollar are starfish and flounder and so they burrow face first to escape these enemies and storms.

To get the white Sand Dollars that are found in stores, soak in 50% Clorox and 50% water and then set in the sun to finish the process.

Live Sand Dollar in the sand just above low tide. This Sand Dollar should survive until the tide comes back in, if noone picks him up.

On the left: live Sand Dollar. On the right: same type of Sand Dollar, dead and bleached by the sun

Bonanza!

Went to the beach yesterday ( Friday) for the first time since Chrsitmas. It was very cold, very windy, and I came back with frozen fingers, but it was worth it.
The beach at Isle of Palms has been full of dead starfish at low and mid tide. There are sections of the beach around 20 feet long and 5 feet wide that are covered in these two types of starfish. The greyish ones are called Grey Sea Stars and the orangish ones are Common Sea Stars In with all of the starfish are small whelks, moon snails, and sea urchin tests.
The beach also has hundreds of bivalves called Incongruous Ark. They are in the sand with the hinge nestled down in to the sand and the shells open with the "critters" gone. The sea gulls, sandpipers, and black birds are not flying much right now. They are into a waddle from such a beach feast!

Introduction

Walking a beach - almost any beach - is an adventure each day. Although low tide makes it easier to find shells and "critters", mid and high tide offer valuable shelling, also.

This blog is mainly about the beach at Isle of Palms, SC, which is located across the "big bridge" from Charleston. Others beaches visited in South Carolina will inlcude Sullivan's Island, Folly Beach, Edisto Beach and Myrtle Beach.

The adventure of low tide shelling, especially on Isle of Palms, is the generous amount of shells typically found. Shelling is like a treasure hunt, and although I've been shelling for many, many years, and have way too many shells (or so my family says), the fun is in the hunt and it is nearly impossible for a serious sheller to pass up a walk. There is a beach close to Edisto Island where adults are not allowed to pick up/take home shells. That was a tense walk for me and I'll not go back. Too much temptation!

If there is a body of water and a place to walk, I'm eager to see what I can find. Some of the Pacific beaches of Costa Rica are a gold mine for beautiful, different sand dollars; the Outer Banks of North Carolina has few shells - at least when I've been there - but there are beautiful pebbles, large groups of devil's purses, and different seaweeds; Edisto offers wonderful whelks - old, worm eaten, and huge as well as great shark tooth looking; and, of course, Sanibel Island is a treasure trove of conchs.

My goal for this blog is to tell the best areas to walk on different beaches according to what can be found, to publish pictures and descriptions of what I find, and to keep a calendar of sorts of what can be found at certain times of the year.