Sunday, February 16, 2020

Woo Hoo! Back at the Beach!

  First beach walk (on my new knee).  I thought it would be hard getting through the loose sand and out to the harder surface near the water, but it was fine and we enjoyed a long walk.  It couldn’t have been a more beautiful day to be out there.  

  Horseshoe crab bodies are beginning to appear, as are washed-up jelly fish.  

Also lots of these ... 


  Pen shells, home of an edible mollusk related to clams, wash ashore as the waters begin to warm.  They can grow to be 12 inches long, I’ve read, but the ones we see are four to maybe five inches long.  

  In the water, the pen shells dig down into the sand with their pointed end until only the fringe top part of the shell is left above the sand.  Then they spin threads from a gland in their foot and attach themselves to a hard object such as a piece of rock or a large buried shell.  

  These threads (called byssus) were harvested in ancient Mediterranean countries and China and weavers wove the “sea silk” into highly prized golden yellow cloth.  The practice continued into the 20th century and there are still a few artisans who continue the tradition in Sardinia. 

  Now the main value of the pen shells is their job as filter feeders that help to keep our increasingly polluted seas a little cleaner.

  Once a pen shell is pulled loose from the bottom it cannot reattach, and these are the pen shells that wash up on the beach.  

  That isn’t all we found at the beach though.  Someone had been having a whole lot of delightfully creative fun!  



















Woo Hoooo!  So good to be back at the beach!  

17 comments:

  1. I am very glad that you have been able to resume your visits to the beach, Cynthia, and I equally appreciate the natural history lesson. I learned things today, and that's always a good thing.

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  2. Beautiful day to be on the beach. Good to hear your knee is doing well.

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  3. Good for you! Interesting about those pen shells.

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  4. Those pen shells are fascinating! I have dozens of shells in my house but have never heard of these. Glad your walk went well and I love those decorated 'weeds' you found at the beach.

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  5. Great that you've made a successful recovery.

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  6. Look at you on that lovely beach, good on you and well done for being able to walk on sand once again.
    Someone has been rather busy with the decorations there..

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  7. Looks beautiful! And I love the shell decorated tree!

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  8. You make me want to walk on the beach again. It's been a long time. So glad you were able to walk in that deep sand...that's hard at times anyway. I've picked up those long thin shells before but never knew what they were. I like the tree decorated with shells...and love the picture of you and the beach!!

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  9. Wonderful to hear that your new knee can handle beach sand. That's great news! I have never heard of pen shells, and I pride myself in knowing a fair amount about the ocean (took a number of marine bio classes back in the day). Really interesting about harvesting their threads.

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  10. Nice to know what those are. I've seen them on Sanibel 8 to 10 inches long!

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  11. What great art at the beach! You look great at the beach I can tell you are happy to be there:)

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  12. I'm so jealous of your beach walking. My favorite activity. I love the decorations. Somebody spent some time and shared some beach love.

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  13. hurrah for your knee allowing beach walking successfully. Glad to see a little SC sunshine.

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  14. Your knee is taking you good places and I like the creativity of the mystery artists on the beach.

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  15. Your beach looks lovely - so good that you're doing so well and can get out there. Got to love a bit of spontaneous beach art.

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  16. Thank you so much for telling us about those pen shells. I’ve never heard of them. What fun things to see at the beach.

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