A Gumshoe In A Shell Game

In a soliloquy by the sea, thoughts flow out with the tide. The mind empties and the pendulum of surf keeps time imprecisely. Seashells are picked up and turned over in the hand, and a man seeking new meanings perhaps will find them there. For shells, as well as being skeletons of animals, are skeletons of thought. They are models of order, proportion and symmetry, sound designs for living that men have pondered as long as they have walked on beaches. All of which is idyllic. And grand. And true. But shell collecting at its sunny, satisfying, back-bending best can be lively, not reflective, sport. I found out. I hadn't meant to—the trip to the Gulf was to be no more than a restful interlude, two aimless weeks at a beach, hot sun on my shoulders, a bagful of books that would probably go unread. But I happened on a sheller, several shellers, in fact, for Sanibel Island, Fla., where I had chosen to stretch out my beach towel, is one of America's extraordinary seashell-collecting sites. I was told that no sophisticated sheller would stoop to scavenging on a beach, for the ocean debris is worn and lusterless. He stalks his whelks in the wild, hunter and hunted, pursuer and pursued, across tidal pool and sandflat, amid eelgrass and sometimes eels. For him, shell collecting is blood sport; the enthusiast develops good wind, strong limbs and a staunch stomach—which he needs to clean his catch.

It takes prodding to bestir oneself to try a down-to-mud approach to the wonders of the sea, but once you are gumshoeing on a conch trail, the pursuit proves captivating. Left behind forever is the romanticist who stands at the water's edge, holding a shell to his ear to hear the sound of waves. Any sheller knows the same effect can be achieved with a milk bottle; the sound that seems like an echo of the ocean is caused by vibration and your own heartbeat.

The shelling sport—and it is officially considered one in California, where shellers must buy fishing licenses—requires various approaches. Collectors wade through marshland, ferret about wharf pilings, pick through oysterbeds. They snorkel, scuba dive and dredge for their quarry. Earnestly competitive, they sometimes carry their hunts to extraordinary lengths. One purposeful Florida lady gutted 1,000 blue dolphin—she got them from charter-boat captains—searching for the fragile Paper Nautilus, which dolphin sometimes eat. She found five, and felt well rewarded for her unappetizing labors. Much of the gratification is in personal discovery; the satisfaction that comes with finding one's own prize specimen.

During the new and full moons, when shelling is at its best, there are collectors who live by the tides, hunting at the ebb—day and night—and sleeping in between. They are forever to be found at the country's great shell beaches—Sanibel, Southern California, Puget Sound, the Florida Keys.

Money is hardly the reward of shelling, but it is a measure of the passion involved. Today, rare shells sell for as high as $3,500. It is not so much the beauty of a species as the supply and demand that determines price, and there often are frantic fluctuations in the market. The Precious Wentletrap is an example. When Europeans first found it in the Far East in the 17th century, this shell was regarded as a royal prize. Catherine the Great and the Queen of Sweden owned Precious Wentletraps, and Francis I, the Holy Roman Emperor, is said to have paid $20,000 for one. So bullish was the wentletrap market that Chinese tradesmen began making artificial ones out of rice paste, a fraud that went undetected for years. Eventually a collector decided to clean his Precious Wentletrap. He dipped it in water and watched aghast as it dissolved. Today the Precious Wentletrap is considered less than precious (it sells for around $10) and the rice-paste imitations have become treasured rarities. Variations in the price of other shells are less extreme. The Golden Cowrie, found frequently through World War II, used to bring $15 to $30; it is now scarce and costs $200. However, the Channeled Volute, a $200 shell 12 years ago, is marketed these days for $8.50; dredgers have discovered large numbers of them off Australia.

But shell collectors rarely gauge their success by the monetary value of the shells they own. Until a few years ago a bell used to be rung on Sanibel Island when anyone there found a Junonia. Such a shell could have been bought for as little as $5 in the local shell shop, but that was not the point. Shell-collecting friends rather casually will give each other $100 finds as birthday presents. And they see no particular irony in keeping a $1,000 shell in a plastic hair-curler box. I met one lady on Sanibel Island who lived in a rented, sparsely furnished house. Her fortune, what little there was of it, was in her shells. She brought down from the rafters hatboxes and cardboard cartons filled with tissue-wrapped seashells. They were worth far more than the house itself. And one saw in the way she held each in her hands her reverence for them.

Most valuable shells are found in deep water, often by commercial fishermen dredging or netting. Some superstitious shrimp-boat captains regard shells as evil omens and throw back $100 specimens without wincing; others trade them for bottles of whiskey. Even fishmongers can profit from shells. A Leucodon Cowrie, one of only three ever found, was discovered undigested in the stomach of a grouper. The shell is worth $3,000—about $1,000 an inch—and now belongs to John duPont, a 31-year-old bachelor who is building a museum in Greenville, Del. for his large collection.

The fascination with shells is not limited to country or class. Collectors range from Key West hairdressers to Emperor Hirohito. The first direct communication from the Emperor to General MacArthur's headquarters immediately following the Japanese surrender concerned seashells. The Emperor was inquiring about the well-being of an old collecting friend who lived in Philadelphia. From time to time Hirohito and an imperial chamberlain are photographed ankle-deep in mud searching for shells. Until World War II one particular species, known as the Emperor's Slit-shell, was considered Hirohito's private property and Japanese fishermen who found them had to turn them in at the palace.

Because few shells are found worldwide, what is commonplace in Rehoboth Beach is a rarity in Brisbane. Long-distance trades are struck and shells shuttle from nation to nation. The variety seems infinite. Mollusks, as scientists call the shell animals, are a far older form of life than man. Some seashells have existed virtually unchanged in design for 200 million years. Clams, mussels, oysters and scallops are types perhaps 60 million years old. In a progress-oriented age it is startling to realize that the Red Helmet shell which a Los Angeles housewife displays on her coffee table looks the same as the one a Cro-Magnon man had kept in his cave in France some 25,000 years ago. This is probably the only object the two establishments have in common, which says much for the enduring attraction of seashells.

The trade routes of prehistoric men have been traced by shells found with their bones. For instance, the Red Helmet shell discovered in the Cro-Magnon cave in 1895 must have traveled hand to hand from East Africa, for Red Helmets only exist in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.