Gulfside City Park | The Shell King

I should probably get my act together when it comes to stating which beach we go to on Thursday (or in this case, Wednesday) Thunder. Wednesday night we stopped off at Gulfside City Park. We almost stopped instead at Tarpon Bay Beach, which I’ve been calling “Pine Cove Beach”, since the Pine Cove Resort sits right there at the water’s edge. Silly me.

So from now on, I’m just gonna start calling the various beaches of Sanibel random names when the mood hits me. So in the future we might visit say, Hot Dog Beach or Pepperoni Pizza Park depending on what my mood is.

So anyhow, we had other plans on Thursday, so the beach took a back seat to pre-made plans and Wednesday Thunder was revisited.

GCP was in full effect. Warm water, lots of mini shells. Wentletraps, Mini Horse Conchs, Lightning Whelks, Coquinas by the palm full…and mini Sand Dollars.

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LOTS of Sand Dollars.

I also scooped up this little live Olive. He didn’t like being in the scoop and tried to make his way anywhere but near me.

I was wading out and scooping up these little Sand Dollars by the ton. There were thousands of them. I had to get out of the water because I was stepping on them…and I didn’t want to kill any on accident. As I mentioned on Instagram to our friend Karen over at The Essential Beachcomber, I’m sure many of these live Sand Dollars ended up in some tourist’s beach bag. No doubt, suffering and slowly dying.

So some thing to keep in mind when you’re visiting/shelling and you come upon a live shell…..

1. Don’t throw it back in the ocean. Gently put them back in the water. I can’t tell you how many times I see people with a live Fighting Conch in their hands and chucking them back into the ocean like they’re trying to throw out the runner at home plate. Yeah see, that kills them. So don’t do that. I’m not very nice to people when I see them doing that.

::sigh::

2. When it comes to Sand Dollars or Starfish – if you’re not sure that they’re still alive, take a good look at the little legs on the Starfish and the whiskers on the Sand Dollar. If they’re moving, guess what – they’re still alive and you should put them back. You can also hold them in the palm of your hand. If it tickles, yep…alive. I know it’s tempting to take them, but please don’t do it.

There are signs out there. Please read them.

We wanted to hit BP before the sun went down, so we headed out that way.

I heard the shell pile out there was gone. Ehhh, not so much. It’s still there, although it’s been picked through pretty well.

They’re continuing the dredge out there, so be careful along the rocks on the jetty side. That water gets to whippin’ pretty quickly and it’ll sweep you over if you’re not fleet of foot.

But the water is officially warm out there, so this weekend I will be doing some diving and snorkeling. I am hoping to run into some nice shells a ways out. Hopefully no sharks.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to ask…..Whattya think about the new design? Easier on the eyes? Easier to navigate? I took a look at the old design and thought the ol’ SK site needed a facelift. With the new design, we’re only showing the two latest posts, which should help the page load quicker (considering we’re picture posting happy all the time) but still offer the option to go back into the archives. Please let us know what you think. New or old?

Pretty cool night for shelling, I must say. Gulfside City Park was our destination for last night’s Thursday Thunder and it did NOT disappoint. I personally wasn’t really “on the hunt” last night. I just felt like relaxing. If we found anything, cool. If we didn’t, still cool. It was 90 degrees outside and Summer is just about in full swing here. No better place to be in my opinion than a beach on Sanibel Island.

I’m almost at the point where I can’t contain my excitement about the weather. Last night’s water temp was 79 degrees. It’s just cool enough (to me at least) to make me gasp when I fully immerse myself, but just warm enough to really get in there and feel around for shells. Another 2 or 3 degrees upwards and it’s time to snorkel. Heck, maybe even this weekend!

There were a whole lot of your typical Sanibel shells along the shore line, and lots and lots of shell piles.

But it was pretty windy, as you can see below as the wind kept blowing my shirt up every time I did the Sanibel Stoop. Good thing I’ve got rock hard abs and the body of an Adonis. Otherwise, it could have made for a really sloppy and somewhat embarrassing photo.

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Queenie was having all kinds of good luck in the shell piles. She found a couple Thick Lipped Drills, a Flat Zig Zag scallop, a ton of mini Olives and NINE Bubble Shells.

…and as she was sitting on a shell pile, this really pristine Banded Tulip just rolled into her pile.

I wasn’t having the same kind of luck. Oh, I found the occasional Olive or Juvenile Fighting Conch, but nothing spectacular….

…until I happened to look into a shell pile at my feet and found this:

That is an Arrow Dwarf Triton. Wow, an awesome find to say the least. I’m not an expert or anything but from what I hear, they’re not a common find around these parts. I didn’t even know what it was until I hit the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum website and discovered its name. Then I got very excited.