A work of art The scallop’s elegant shape long has inspired artists. STAFF PHOTOS BY DAN PARKER
Winter is a good time to search for seashells on Port Aransas beaches. Tides and winds combine favorably to expose dozens of types of shells.
On one recent morning, selftaught naturalist Steve Zarych accompanied a South Jetty reporter/ photographer on a beachcombing session for about an hour along about 100 yards of shoreline just south of Horace Caldwell Pier. Their finds lie on this page.
While shells commonly found on Port Aransas beaches tend not to be of the large, ostentatious variety found in other parts of the world, our local shells do possess a subtle beauty, and finding them is a personal experience that’s special.
Beachcombing bonanza Steve Zarych shows fruits of a beachcombing session in Port Aransas.
“These are things you found yourself,” Zarych said. “They’re not something you buy in a store. They’re your own treasures.”
Zarych knows a thing or two about finding treasures on the beach. A pretty regular beachcomber on local shores the past 10 years, he conducts beach walks for anyone who would like to join him beginning at 9 a.m. on the fourth Friday of each month at Horace Caldwell Pier. (It’s a program of the Port Aransas Parks and Recreation Department.)
Coquina The Atlantic coquina takes on various pastel hues, but this one was bleached white by the sun.
“You don’t find many of them” Zarych said. “I found two of them. It’s small. It’s shiny on the inside, like a dark mother of pearl. It’s got a real strange shape.”
Another favorite find: A spiny jewel box – a kind of clam. “It’s got real long projections that stick out of it, like stalactites growing out of it. … It’s real unusual, and I’ve found a few of them.”
Zarych didn’t run across a spiny jewel box on his excursion with the reporter/photographer. But he did find a freshwater clamshell. While a common item on the Port Aransas beach, it is, in its own way, a wondrous thing – a relic from a time long before the first Europeans set foot in Texas. Freshwater clams lived here back when Port Aransas had fresh water flowing in the area, more than 10,000 years ago.
Auger This shell was named for its physical similiarity to a boring tool.
Out of the past Plucked recently from beach sands in Port Aransas, this fresh-water clam shell is at least 10,000 years old.
Zarych also found a shell called a baby’s ear. The delicately formed shell is named for its similarity in appearance to a human baby’s ear. But that name belies the predatory nature of the creature that once inhabited the shell, according to the National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Shells.
“As it plows through the sand, searching for clams to attack, it leaves behind a broad furrow,” the book states.
Zarcyh found a chunk of barnacle too. Barnacles are a pain for boaters but, lying on the beach, they boast a pretty purplish hue.
A dollar’s worth Break a sand dollar, and out will fall five tiny teeth that look like tiny white doves in flight.
Another find Zarych made this day: The top of a lightning whelk – named official state seashell of Texas by the 70th Legislature in 1987. It’s one of the few shells that open on the left side.
“It
went its own way,” Zarych said. “Just like Texas.”
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