COASTE | TREASURES 6.
Lettered Olive
Mmmm. Olives. Oh, wait. Not those kinds of olives. This olive, like all olives, is a carnivore: it captures bivalves and small crustaceans with its foot and takes them below the sand surface to digest. Its presence is sometimes detected at very low tides by the trails it leaves when it crawls below the surface on semi-exposed sand flats. 7. You can often find the Lightning Whelk egg chains on the beach. They are the long snake looking, spiky chains. FemaleWhelks produce these long egg chains which can get up to 33 inches. There can be up to 145 egg capsules in each strand and each capsule contains around 45 eggs. That’s alot of babies. The Lightning Whelk is also the only shell with a left handed opening. The Shark Eye snails are carnivorous gastropods which burrow in sand or mud. They feed on smaller snails and clams by drilling through the shells of those creatures. The snail secretes an acid onto the victim’s shell, then pierces the softened spot on the shell with its radula (tooth). One of their favorite foods is the Coquina which are the tiny multi-colored clams that burrow in sand at the shore. 8. Lightning Whelk Shark Eye
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