Pink ones

It always amazes me how many treasures the ocean washes up each day. Now that I am having a daily beach-walk, I am aware of these and have been gathering the different shells that strike my fancy. Today it was the pink ones, a beautiful barnacle, a small clam-like shell and a lovely snail. All of these are seen from time to time; they are not rare, but it is the colour today, drawing them to me. Each beach of course, has shells specific to it. When I was a kid visiting the West Coast, the shells were totally different and different again at the beaches on the East Coast further south.

As I make my walks, the beach doesn’t ever look much different from the day before, unless of course, there has been a storm. Sometimes it seems sparse and I think that I won’t find anything to bring home, but there is always something. Yesterday there were dozens of common cockles. I collected two of these because of their size; they were bigger than any I had seen before.

Another thing I have noticed is that sometimes the smallest of shells are washed up together. Yesterday was a prime example, with three baby conches lying side-by-side, the only ones I saw that day. It was almost like they had said to each other, ``stay with me’’. Of course, what I find are usually the empty shells, with the living organism long since departed. One wonders what has caused the end of life to these babies and how did they manage to wash up within centimetres of each other? Are currents that precise? When one thinks of their journey, from where ever their home was in the ocean, to end up on the beach, so close to each other, is pretty remarkable. Nature is certainly amazing.