One of the best parts of a beach trip for many visitors and locals is gathering seashells that dot the shoreline after the tide recedes, and a guidebook for identifying those finds has been given a new update.
The North Carolina Sea Grant’s Katie Mosher and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Research Curator of Mollusks Arthur Bogan worked together, with the help of many others, to updates Hugh Porter’s “Seashells of North Carolina.”
“We have probably ... more than 1,000 species that are native to the coast of North Carolina. All the way from the estuaries at mouths of rivers, bays, to right up on the shore out to deep obviously areas up towards the continental slope,” Bogan said.
In addition to finds along the shorelines and the region’s estuaries, Bogan said shellers are drawn to North Carolina for its designation as The Graveyard of the Atlantic.
He said, "There's a lot of people that are divers that are fascinated with diving their shipwrecks off the coast and all the mollusks that occur with the ships.”
And he said the shell gathering pastime can be nearly addictive for collectors.
“You can fall down a rabbit hole and you may not come back for 50 years,” Bogan said, “It depends on your level of curiosity and your focus. What do you want to know?”
The detailed descriptions of 275 species in “Seashells of North Carolina” include photos and step-by-step instructions for shell identification.
The book can be purchased here: https://store.naturalsciences.org/collections/books-puzzles/products/seashells-of-north-carolina
