Collecting/Keeping Seashells... While You Can!

 Scientists are finding what common sense already knows: oceans are acidifying from CO2 buildup in the atmosphere, and it's killing corals, oysters, and thus presumably most other sea life protected by hard  calcified shells.

When I was five, my Mom was very sick. I went to live with relatives while my older brother stayed with our father and went to school. It turned out I went to school as well, since I was now in the big city and they offered kindergarten, not yet available in a tiny rural school. I learned a lot, like street lights and tying my shoes and spelling my name. My older cousin taught me to make my bed... and hers as well since she was always on the brink of late to high school. I had no problem with that because I was "growing up!" I never tattled on her either, at least not to my Aunt.

My Aunt and Uncle had a big bowl full of small seashells, all kinds of varieties. When I was both good as well as bored, I was allowed to take them down, spread them carefully around the carpeted floor, and examine them. Then they went back in the bowl, and the bowl back on the table. It was my introduction to shells. Any others were the little snails along freshwater lakes or clams when one could spot them. That usually happened after the raccoons came in the evening and had a feast of their insides.

My parents, long ago, collected shells. They'd vacation on Sanibel Island, a location where storms in the Gulf would send shells in towards the beach. They'd be out there scouring the sands the mornings after, looking for intact and identifiable ones. Though retired, they had a hobby business to run, named Jewels of Shell. What they couldn't find, they'd buy and have shipped by the crate. (We still use those empty crates - very sturdy!)

Good shells would be used in different ways. Small perfect ones would be turned into jewelry. Medium ones would be hot-glued into figures like silly baseball players. Rare and thin ones, or cuts of ones showing internal architecture, would be made into wall art, put in deep frames called shadow boxes  behind glass to stay safe and dust free for... hopefully, almost forever. I received some which still decorate my walls. The most recognizable ones are cut sections of chambered nautilus, but there are others of critters I can't even name any more.

 Just a couple times Mom took several varieties of smaller and interesting shells, and glued them in a pattern around a circular frame for a mirror. "Strawberry strombus" comes to mind as one of the showier ones, but likely there are olives, corals, scallops, coquinas in lots of colors, and other bivalves well displayed. I'm relying on memory here because that is a family heirloom already passed on to my granddaughter to save for her descendants. She's the last one in my line to remember my Mom.

I also have boxes of them, packaged for traveling as we move, and rarely taken out to look at. They're being saved for the great-grandchildren who have shown they would treat them with respect if not reverence. The one most of the kids get to see is a large conch which lets them "hear the ocean".

I protect the rest because all too soon they will be nearly impossible to find, and certainly not pristine as acid eats away at their shells and footsteps and carelessness break them. Mine come from the '70s. 

I'm not suggesting you head out and strip the oceans of their shells. But if you do have them, or come across some while beach combing, pick them up gently and protect them.   Chances to do so are diminishing.