Hermit Crabs, Sand Dollars, and SharkTeeth — Oh My!

The South Carolina Sea Islands are a wealth of riches just teeming with life. These are not powdery white beaches with sun-bleached (empty) shells and crystal clear waters. We have had the privilege of spending time on beaches like that and they are exquisite and wonderful. The beaches here are exquisite and wonderful too, but in a whole other way. This is a different dimension of beach. And it is not for the faint of heart. In the five weeks we’ve been here we have rarely found an empty shell– there is something living inside just about all of them. And you can’t walk two feet without coming across something alive.

Everywhere — in every fraction of every square inch of every piece of the beach, there is life here. It is truly unbelievable. You can’t love this place unless you take a deep breath, breath in the salty air, and accept that there is stuff squirming, crawling, scurrying, living everywhere you look. The ecosystem here is healthy.

We have spent hours and hours this summer finding all sorts of things. But our three favorites are definitely hermit crabs, sand dollars, and sharks’ teeth.

There are hermit crabs everywhere on the Harbor Island beach. There are big ones and small ones and everything in between.

We’ve had so much fun finding them, playing with them, and then always leaving them behind on the beach to live their lives. Some of their shells are so beautiful, we’d love to keep them, but we have only twice in our five weeks found uninhabited shells.

And sometimes we’re surprised to find something inside that isn’t a hermit crab. One day Owen found this (below) — it is an Eastern Conch, otherwise known as a Whelk. Like I said… not for the faint of heart! (He asked me if he could pull it out and eat it. He was very disappointed when I said no.)

On both Harbor Island and Hunting Island, sand dollars are in abundance. In the five weeks that we’ve been here we have seen hundreds. But we’ve never seen a dead one. So, sadly, we have no sand dollar shells to take home. Happily, it means this place is alive and well — a place where sand dollars can flourish and thrive.

When the tide is high, Kyle and Owen love diving for sand dollars just off the shore. They find dozens and dozens of them under the water.

At low tide you can find sand dollars sitting on the wet sand, hunkering down, just waiting for the tide to come back up. During low tide Meera loves looking for sand dollars along the beach. She has become quite the expert at finding them, and has found many.

But our favorite thing to do is to look for shark teeth. On certain beaches (and really, in areas all throughout the sea islands) you can find fossilized shark teeth. Believe it or not, these are the teeth of sharks that lived thousands to millions of years ago! The beach at Hunting Island is our favorite place to look for them. When the tide is low, the bambinos love to walk along the water’s edge and search for shark teeth in the very shallow water.

You can find them scattered all over the dry beach too.

We find lots of them in all sorts of shapes and sizes. In our five weeks here we’ve been collecting them. Our shark teeth collection is now pretty large — we’ve probably found a couple hundred of them! Here are a few of the ones we’ve found:

The bambinos have found tons of other interesting things too. Lots of horseshoe crabs and jellyfish.

Kyle is fearless. He’ll pick up and hold anything. While his brother and sister squirm, he’ll hold every kind of crab he can catch.

And Owen is so quick that he can catch all sorts of little things in the water with his bare hands. He loves to catch tiny shrimp and minnows in the tidal pools at low tide.

And with nets and buckets the bambinos catch all sorts of crabs and shrimp and fish and who-knows-what-else!