The air temp was in the 70’s and the water in the Indian River was in the 60’s. It was a windy day, so not good for fishing, but we took the boat out for a quick trip.
We stopped at our first spot (second stop link below) and I got out and walked on the mud flats and in some shallow water looking for wildlife. I’ll call this place the Tributary. Water was rushing out fast on the outgoing tide.
The Tributary
We have stopped at this little sandy area many times, but the last time we were here I met my first spider crab. Today it was very quiet and mostly free of living things. Even people / boaters were scarce on this windy day. The usually scurrying crabs were nowhere to be seen and the shells were sparse. I decided to photograph the beautiful mangroves and their crazy roots.
Beautiful Mangroves
A beach empty of shells
Crazy mangrove roots and oysters at their base
Old roots and a single calm shell
One thing that struck me was the lack of hermit crabs. There were none that I saw! Usually it is all I see, but today I saw no big shells and no scurrying hermits. I did see a few shells that seemed to be empty, but they may have had hermit crabs.
It reminds me that I have a lot to learn about my local environment.
And then I found an egg casing called a sand collar.
Moon Snails Make Sand Collar Egg Casings
I honestly was not sure what this was, but there were two of these things, so I suspected it was some sort of seashell / sea snail related thing that had to do with eggs. To touch this, you would think it was some discarded piece of trash because it feels like rubber. It is the egg casing of a moon snail (which I usually label a “shark’s eye“).
Shark’s Eye shell
That collar I am holding is made up of eggs and sand. I didn’t know this when I picked it up, but wanted a photo to identify it on my blog. I had no idea I was holding hundreds of babies! I put it back, and then found another sand collar (link to Wikipedia) nearby to photograph under the water.
Sand collar made up of baby moon snails and sand
The sand collar egg case is laid in such a way so it will stay upright and in place. I wish I had not picked up that first case, but I honestly did not remember what it could be. I should have left it and taken a photo, like I did with the second one. Photography was tough because of the wind and rippling water.
Sand collar under shallow water
The Only Shells I Found Here
As I have mentioned the area was quite different from what I find in summer. There were barely any shells at all of any kind. I took photos of the few shells I did come across. The photo titles are at the bottom of each picture.
Broken juvenile horse conch
Crown conch
This pear whelk could have been empty, but more likely a hermit crab was tucked down inside.
Open and empty mussel shell
Thanks for reading about our first stop finds. Please go on and read about what I found onour second stop.
The shell-makers are the mollusks, or sea snails, which begin life as tiny creatures who will make stunning and intricate homes we call shells. The shell thieves are the hermit crabs who take over the shells once the mollusk has died and left it empty. Let’s be clear, they have to steal these shells to survive, and they don’t kill the owner, just move in once it’s no longer occupied.
Of all the shells I find on my Florida boating and beach-combing journeys, 99% of the gastropods (shells in one piece, not two) are filled with one of these; mollusks / sea snails, or hermit crabs. Rarely do I find a pretty spiral shell which is empty.
Let’s Take a Boat Ride and Find Some Wild Florida Things
Once we launch our flats boat, we head out across the main channel of the Intracoastal Waterway (Indian River where I live) and enter the back channel. The waterway we travel is not as deep, but it is large with numerous islands and shallow canals. It would be very easy to become lost, or turned around in this area. My son has been fishing here for many years so he knows where to go and how to follow the deeper water while running the boat. The water is murky as you can see in my photos, and it is saltwater. On this day in May the water temperature was around 85 degrees. Very warm! We saw many dolphin, but no manatee.
Shallow backwater where islands of mangroves and oyster beds thrive in brackish water
We pull up at a canal which is emptying into the larger canal as the tide is being pulled out (photo below). Tides are weird way back here because the water has a long way to go to meet the ocean up atPonce Inlet. The water can move fast in places depending on what the tides are doing.
In the photo below the water is rushing toward me. The tide is going out. The greenery you see are mangroves. The bottom is sandy and the water is shallow – about to my knees. (There is an excellent article about Florida mangroves at the FDEP (Florida Department of Environmental Protection.)
A more shallow canal emptying water out as the tide changes
To the right of the photo above I see grass and a sandy bottom just below the water. Soon the sand will dry out while the tide is low. This is where life abounds.
The shell-makers and shell thieves live in the same places as far as I can tell, and they love the mangroves. The conchs and whelks can probably find food in this ecosystem and the hermits can find empty shells. There were no birds here, but we usually do see herons or other birds (sometimes the Roseate Spoonbill) along the edge of the mangroves.
We beach the boat in shallow water here and I get out to find sea life to photograph. I expect to find lots of hermit crabs and I do. One is poised at the top of a stalk (below). Others inhabit whelks and conchs (lots of crown conchs) and they all scurry around doing their thing. Sometimes I find groups of hermits together and I don’t know what they are doing except maybe inspecting each other’s shell size. I’m not a scientist, but I know they need to upgrade to bigger shells as they grow.
This little hermit crab has climbed a stalk in the shallow water
As I begin my walk I immediately see three different shells at my feet. A pear whelk (bottom of photo), big tulip, and crown conch are all scurrying. The sea snails move slowly, but the hermit crabs, which now live in the shells, are quick. I can see their spidery legs pulling the shells along the sand.
Three different shells each inhabited by a hermit crab
Those two shells at the top, in my photo above, meet up and the bigger one seems to be bullying the smaller and pulling at the shell. I plan to do some research on our local hermit crab population and write a post all about it. I most often see the Striped hermit, like the one in my photo. One time I found a Giant red hermit crab and that was awesome! Right now, I don’t know much about the activity of hermit crabs but I often find clumps of them together.
The hermits meet up
I’m always amazed at the various sizes of hermits I find in the wild. The one inside this little shell is very small. I wanted a photo of the shell to maybe identify it, but I don’t know yet what it is.
Little shell of some sort with a tiny crab inside
Below is a photo of a haven for sea life. In this murky water, which is at the base of the mangrove tree roots, are oysters, small fish, hermit crabs and quite possibly live sea snails.
There are many living creatures under this murky water
A little further along and I found higher ground where the red mangrove roots could be seen. At high tide the roots are mostly covered by water. See the oysters attached along the base of the red roots? Oysters are important for filtering the water. We have to be careful not to hit any oyster beds with our boat, and it’s one of the reasons I wear water shoes. Oysters can easily cut feet!
Oysters cling to mangrove roots
As I walked along, blue crabs scurried out of my way, or ducked into holes in the sand to hide.
A blue crab scurries out of a hole in the sand
I saw small fish, but larger fish use these mangrove areas to have their young and find food. Fiddler crabs were abundant on this island and another island we visited which was closer to the Inlet up north.
All those little brown things are tiny Fiddler crabs scurrying into the shadows as I walk by! There had to have been millions on this island…! Fiddler crabs are a favorite food of Sheepshead fish. Other fish probably eat them too.
A gazillion fiddler crabs scurrying off into the mangroves
The Best Part of Florida
In my opinion the best part of Florida is where there are few to no people. The mangroves and backwaters, during the weekdays, are peaceful and quiet. It’s like going back in time to the way Florida was before the invasion of people. I imagine this is how it looked to the Indians and explorers. But I think the wildlife was much more abundant when they were here.
Then I catch a glimpse of the high-rise condos along the Eastern horizon and it’s back to reality. I fear for this area because my biggest problem with Florida is it’s seeming lack of consideration for natural habitats. I can’t help but wonder if years from now no one will get to see what I’ve seen today.
We recently camped at Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine, Florida. It did not disappoint with a beautiful, uncrowded beach and nature enclosed campsites.
The first time I heard of the oil drilling platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, I immediately thought about Sanibel Island – and the Florida and gulf coastline – that is home to a huge and diverse variety of land and marine animals, including the mollusks.
The oil spill will affect every living thing in those waters in a very negative way. And mollusks, the animals in the shells, live at all depths of the ocean, but an important area for not only mollusks, but fish, birds, reptiles and other wildlife is the mangrove areas.
The mangroves, where many animals thrive, are plants living near or in the water line along the coast or inlets in salt water. Typically the mangrove trees have lots of roots above and below water and aid in protecting the coast from erosion. They are also home to many types of mollusks. The water is saline, or brackish, but shallow and serves as a place of protection among the root systems. Oil on mangrove roots kills the trees by not allowing oxygen in.
In fact, “Florida’s fisheries would suffer a dramatic decline without access to healthy mangrove habitats.” is an excerpt taken from “Ichthyology” in the section about the importance of mangroves and how they serve as breeding grounds for all kinds of fish and mollusks as well as shrimp and oysters. This page tells of the detrimental impact of disasters, including oil spills and it leaves me wondering how on earth an oil spill this enormous can ever be cleaned up before catastrophic damage is done.
Mollusks, either eat plants and algae or other animals. If their food sources are covered in oil, or the creatures they eat have been affected by the oil, it will be passed on to the creature who eats it. If the mangroves die, where will marine life go who depend on mangrove areas for protection and how will a lack of protection from erosion affect our coastline and the fishing industry?
I suppose that only long term studies can tell us exactly how great an impact this latest disaster has been, but I am not looking forward to the results when what we can see already is so disturbing.
