Most people go to the beach to sit down. Leslie Norris goes to the beach to look down.
Norris makes the drive from Semmes to Dauphin Island nearly every day of the week for her work as a beach ambassador for the Town of Dauphin Island and as supervisor of the West End Bird Conservation Program. Then, on weekends, she comes back for an entirely different reason.
“I’m not like most people who go to the beach to relax,” she says. “I’m there all day long. The only reason I come back is to shell.”
Twelve Years of Collecting
Norris has been a shell collector for about twelve years, and in that time she has accumulated a quantity she declines to specify precisely. “I have more shells than I’d like to admit,” she says.
The interest took hold when she started working on the beach and realized how much variety was underfoot. A friend’s mother, part of a shell collecting group in Mobile, taught her the names. Norris, who has always been drawn to marine science, found the identification work as rewarding as the finding.
The Island Has Two Very Different Beaches
Anyone who has shelled Dauphin Island seriously learns quickly that the east end and the west end are not the same hunting ground.
- The east end is where the small shells are. Norris hunts wentletraps here, her personal favorites, some so tiny she has to wear reading glasses to spot them. Sand dollars here can be no larger than a pencil eraser.
- The west end produces the larger specimens. The jetties on the east end intercept the bigger shells before they can reach shore, which leaves the west end with the heavier finds.
“There’s not very much that you can’t find on the island,” she says. Scallops, lightning whelks and fighting conchs are among the most common finds.
Reading the Waterline
Experienced shellers can usually tell within minutes whether a day will be productive, and Norris reads the edge of the water to do it.
“A lot of times, that will tell you what you’re going to find. If every time the wave hits the sand, it leaves a bunch of little, tiny stuff in there, then it’s going to be a good shell day for the most part,” she says. “And when I start seeing the stuff washing up, it’s like an addiction. I can’t help it.”
Hurricane season, counterintuitively, is the best time of year. Churning water lifts shells from depths where they would otherwise remain and carries them to the shoreline.
The Junonia
The Johnstone’s junonia (Scaphella junonia johnstoneae) is the official state shell of Alabama and a notoriously difficult find. It lives in water between roughly 29 and 126 meters deep and typically only washes ashore after strong storms. Some collectors search a lifetime without seeing one.
Norris found two in the same ten-foot stretch of sand.
“I was determined I was going to find one, but I never did,” she says. “Then, one day, I was working with the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network doing winter patrols, and I just drove by one, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh!’ And then 10 feet later, there was another one. Some people look their whole lives and never find one, so it was crazy.”
Ethical Shelling
Norris is emphatic about one rule. She does not take living animals.
“I do practice ethical shelling,” she says. “Some shellers will go scuba diving and will find a live animal, and they’ll take it and kill the animal just to get the shell that it’s in. I do not do that.”
She also avoids over-collecting, and she redistributes her surplus back to the beach. “The shells do build the beach up, and they are homes for other things,” she says. When she is out working, she routinely hands finds to strangers. “Shelling makes me happy, and it needs to make other people happy, too.”
What She Does With Them
Some of the collection is displayed. The rest becomes art. Norris makes flowers from white shells and mounts them on driftwood, using green sea glass for leaves. She builds shadow boxes and assembles wind chimes from shells and driftwood.
Tips for a First-Time Sheller
- Go after a storm. Wind and waves lift shells from the seafloor and deposit them on the beach.
- Bring a mesh bag. Sand runs straight through it. A bucket will fill with sand and become dead weight.
- Bring a sand rake. On productive days it lets you scoop shells and leave the sand behind.
- Sort on the beach. Shake out sand and debris before you head home.
- Leave anything alive. If there is an animal inside, put it back.
Species Worth Knowing
Violet snails (Janthina janthina) turn up alongside Portuguese man o’ war, which they attach to and prey upon. In the water they blow bubbles to stay afloat.
Fighting conchs (Strombus alatus) range from brown to tan and can reach four inches.
Lightning whelks (Sinistrofulgur perversum) coil counterclockwise, making them one of the few left-handed shells in the Gulf.
Keyhole sand dollars (Mellita quinquiesperforata) appear across the island, larger on the west end and smaller on the east.