Shell Collecting at Lake Tyers Beach

Collections can become compulsive when the objects themselves become the pre-occupation , rather than what is learnt by collecting.

Collecting common shells is pretty harmless and quite instructive for young people if they also learn something about the organisms that produced them and what sort of environments they lived in.

Collecting rare or endangered species is not necessary to average budding zoologist. Learning identification skills, cataloging, and organisation are some of the benefits.

Some of our greatest thinkers, such as Charles Darwin helped formulate the incredibly important idea of Natural Selection through collecting things and sifting through the deeper meaning of what he seeing.

With the age of digital photography all around us it is easy to collect without keeping. So if you if find something interesting take some great photos and leave the animal alone. For example you might find a great Hermit Crab in a beautiful shell. A photo would do I reckon.....

Shell Collecting

Shells are formed by molluscs (ie the snail family of animals) to be a hardy protection against predators. They have little internal structures that are hard, apart from a radula in most of them, which is the rasp like tongue they apply to scrape food off the rocks, or bore through other snail's shells! But the shells are certainly hardy and are evidence in abundance on our shores of other environments that we can get a glimpse of when we understand where and how these animals have grown, how much are they alike and what are their differences.

Some shells are very plain in some respects, but have a beauty in the line and form as each section is created.	Shells of the same species can have exciting variations on colour and patterns, you don't need them all!
The Wikipedia reference to molluscs is highly recommended. It gives information on the widest types of molluscs because they also include octopus, squid and cuttelfish as well as nudibranchs that do not have shells.	Some shells look like the common snails that we might find in the garden, but others can really be inspiring.
Some shells are still inhabited so don't collect them. Take the photo and return them to their environment.	The sea is highly effective at grinding up shells, see if you can find your perfect specimen. Return your rejects to the beach.
Obviously not a shell, but also not a jellyfish, it is actually the gelatinous egg mass of a snail.	Not a snail shell, but Barnacle "shells", these are crustaceans, so are more closely related to Prawns!!!