Last week I spent many wonderful days walking Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. Although there were not many shells to find...I did discover several strange, grey, rubbery pieces of something....
You may have had this same experience and wondered what they are?
Well - they are the egg collars of Northern Moon Snails!
Both the Northern Moon Snail and the Shark's Eye Moon Snail create and lay their eggs into these "egg/sand collars".
Here is a close-up of the eggs in the sand collar. The eggs are smaller than the grains of sand on the beach!

The two types of Moon Snails commonly found on New England beaches are the Northern Moon Snail and the Shark's Eye Moon Snail. The Shark's Eye Moon Snail is found on Cape Cod and Southern New England/Northeast beaches. You can tell the difference between the two by turning them over. The Northern Moon Snail has an opening called a umbilicus - it reminds me of a belly button! The Shark's Eye is also called the Lobed Moon Snail and that is because it has a "lobe" of shell covering it's umbilicus. Here you can clearly see the difference:

You may notice that the Shark's Eye has more blue coloring than the Northern Moon Snail especially around the "eye" or the very point/apex of the shell. But I have also found Northern Moon Snails that are very dark blue all over....I wonder if they have been eating Blue Mussels?

For more information on Moon Snails check out these web sites:
http://www.ecokids.ca/pub/eco_info/topics/field_guide/underwater

http://www.asnailsodyssey.com/LEARNABOUT/MOON/moonRepr.php

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/09/625582/-Marine-Life-Series-Moon-Snails-and-Sand-Collars#

I read that the best beach for seashells in Rhode Island was on Napatree Point, Watch Hill in Westerly Rhode Island. Well, I found that to be absolutely true! Walking along the bay side of the spit there was an amazing amount of seashells and of various kinds! I'm so glad I was able to visit Watch Hill in Rhode Island!
Click on FULL SCREEN for the best view of this video.

Great video from Plymouth PAC TV filmed on our recent visit to Long Beach in Plymouth - with the Beach Ambassadors from the Goldenrod Foundation.

Not long ago I was invited by Dorie Stolley of the Goldenrod Foundation to be a guest leader on a field trip to discover the mollusks of Long Beach in Plymouth, Ma. I was thrilled to accept the invitation.
On Sunday, April 27th Dorie, my husband and I, the Beach Ambassadors, and PACTV (Plymouth Area Community Television) reporter Brian braved the rather chilly temperatures for a beach combing afternoon.
At first many of the finds were pieces of shells -some hard to distinguish - except for the iridescent bits of blue mussel. But as we made our way down the beach we were rewarded with many wonderful finds.
We found HUGE periwinkles, slipper shells, surf clams, blue mussels, quahogs, black clams, soft shell clams, gould’s pandoras, northern moon snails, bay scallops, waved whelks, a stimpson whelk, a sweet little new england whelk and one gorgeous specimen of a New England Neptune (also called a ten-ridged whelk)!
It was a wonderful afternoon and I was so pleased to meet and be in the company of so many environmentally conscious people. I was able to talk about the seashells I love and the creatures that inhabit them. It was a great day - one that we enjoyed immensely!
My thanks to everyone who participated and special thanks to Dorie for the invitation! I’m especially pleased with the work that the Goldenrod Foundation is doing to protect and preserve the nature of Long Beach. I was honored to be a part of their mission.

On the vernal equinox (March 20, 2014), my husband and I walked the spit of Plymouth Long Beach along the harbor channel. It was a good hike and we were happy to find lots of shells. I picked up a few as you can see from the photo - The top shells are the two halves (or valves) of an oyster, many Moon snail tops (I think there is a craft for them in the future), Periwinkles, two Gould's Pandora shells, one Flat Slipper Shell, a False Angel Wing, a huge Operculum from a Moon Snail, a broken New England Dog Whelk, three Bay Scallops, a neat rock, two pieces of beach glass and a fish bone vertebra. We also found the carcass of a dolphin and later we found two of it's ribs on the shoreline.
The shell that surprised me the most is the oyster shell. It looks more like a European Oyster Shell and I'm curious if anyone knows if this is possible. (I have read that they are farming them in Maine?)
But the big treasure of the day - is that large Operculum - it is the "door" to the Moon Snail - it covers it's aperture - the opening of the shell.
We also saw some Brant geese, Common Eider ducks and Sanderlings - sweet!

European Oyster?

The dead dolphin : (

The Operculum. (door to opening of Moon Snail)

Brant Geese & Sanderling.

Dolphin ribs.

Eider ducks.

These Periwinkles and Dogwinkles (also called Dog Whelks) were hard to see in the last video post so here you can take a closer look!

Here are examples of the beautiful Northern Moon Snail shells. I picked up a lot of partial shells - mostly the top half so that I can use them in crafts. It is a good idea to leave some whole Moon Snails on the beach for Hermit Crabs. They need a home too!

In the last video from Hampton Beach - I had these shells in an Altoid case for protection. It is hard to get a good look at them in the video so I photographed them here so you can see them "up close". These False Angels Wings are small - the larger one being an inch and a half.

This is a Ribbed Pod - also called the Atlantic Razor Clam. These shells are delicate and break easily as you can see from one side of the bivalve. The Ribbed Pod is 2 and half inches long. Blue Mussels are on the right. They typically have stronger shells and can be kept in your beach pail or a pocket!

At last! I was able to make it back to the seashore and I'm so happy that I did! We went to Hampton Beach, N.H. and found lots of shells. It was a wonderful sunny day! We found blue mussels, atlantic jackknife clams (also called common razor clams), surf clams, black hard shell clams (false quahogs), periwinkles, dogwinkles, northern moon snails, ribbed pods, and a false angel wing! Here is the video we shot:

On Saturday, December 28th, the temperatures were up around 42 degrees fahrenheit - a great time to head to the shore to do some exploring! We drove out to Long Beach in Plymouth, Massachusetts and walked along it’s lengthy shore. It turned out to be a great day for finding all sorts of shells. There were so many Northern Moon Snails that I actually stopped picking them up! We found three whole sand dollars - two large and one very tiny one. So sweet.
There were ginormous surf clams, mussels, periwinkles, slipper shells, etc. I will post a photo so you can see for yourself : ) So don’t wait for summer to explore the shore - winter is a great time to find shells and enjoy the relative quiet of the beach. It was a great day and I look forward to going back to explore Long Beach again!