Seashell Secrets

Heading to the seaside this summer? Take a moment to admire the intricate shape and form of seashells, which reveal so much about their mysterious former inhabitants.

- HELEN SCALES

Go to the seaside and escape between the tides. Get sandy toes, listen to the waves - and always, always look for seashells.

A day at the beach isn’t complete without a sandcastle decorated with these marine treasures, or a few in the pocket to bring home. Adorning bathroom shelves and windowsills, seashells are not only fond reminders of a visit to the sea, but they have many secrets to share and stories to tell about the animals that made them and the wonders of their watery world. Any shell, after all, was once part of a living, breathing sea creature. Learn to decipher these hidden messages and you’ll start to see seashells in a whole new light.

Every time you pick up an empty seashell, you’re holding a mollusc’s abandoned exoskeleton, which these soft-bodied animals use as a multi-purpose tool. This is their home, their place to hide, and the attachment point for muscles to help them move. There’s a plethora of shells to find, made by different kinds of molluscs, in habitats all around the UK coasts.

Rocky shores and tide pools are home to lots of sea snails (gastropods) with elegant spiraling shells, including dog whelks and periwinkles. When it’s alive, a sea snail pokes its tentacled head out of its shell’s open hole and crawls along on a muscly foot.

At low tide, limpet-like chitons with ‘coat-of-mail’ shells, creep about under rocks, their shells in eight plates across their backs. Sandy beaches are the domain of cockles, razor clams, and other types of bivalves, each bearing a pair of crinkled and fan-shaped shells that clamp tightly together to keep their soft bodies tucked up inside.