Finding perfectly dried beautiful SEA BISCUITS, URCHINS and fragile shells like RAMS HORNS on the beach is always an exciting experience during our vacations.
We found all of these gems last week on Anegada Island in the British Virgin Islands while combing the white sandy beaches surrounded by light turquoise waters.
Its amazing to me that such lovely and fragile pieces of natural art can be found laying in the sand completely intact and unbroken by the sea. RAM’S HORNS (Spirula spirula– the internal shell of a SQUID- ) are so brittle I’m always afraid they will break in my suitcase when traveling home so I have to plan my packing. (And yes! That’s a HAMBURGER BEAN I found- so excited!)
That’s why choosing a few specimens to bring home gets difficult knowing we have to pack them to survive airport luggage handling and my own klutzy mishaps with carry-ons. I’ve learned through the years, we must get creative in our packaging… use everything we already have. I bought a few Tervis tumbler souvenirs with sippy lids (I told you I was a klutz) so I packed some of our SEA URCHINS in the cup then added RAMS HORNS wrapped in bath tissue to fill the top. The key is to pack a container so that nothing rattles or moves inside the container and nothing can crush it.
Just to make it even more snug, I pushed the cup into Clark’s dive bootie as another layer of cushion. I pushed it all the way down into the foot part of the bootie- it doesn’t take much more room in your luggage that way.
Not one broke!
We always take at least one plastic lidded container with us to our beach destination filled with snacks or something so we will have space in the luggage for treasures on our return trip. This was perfect container to safely travel with SEA BISCUITS and a shellmungus SEA URCHIN Clark found. If you don’t take a container with you, then while on vacation buy chicken or fruit salad for lunch one day and save the plastic container and lid for packing your shells. Choose tubs/cups/containers that won’t crush when you have the lid on them.
Since this wasn’t a small, tight space like the Tervis cups, I wrapped each URCHIN, SEA BISCUIT and bright pink PEN SHELL (Clark filled the inside of the PEN SHELL with tissue as well to keep it from crushing) and other fragiles in the container….
But instead of being excessive with the tissue, I wrapped the larger URCHINS with my sun shirts to give them more padding and to fill the empty spaces so nothing would move inside when I put the lid on it. Make sure you don’t pack it too tightly so it bulges when the top is secure. Wrap a tee shirt around the closed container and made sure that it was in the middle of my luggage with padding around the corners.
I ended up putting a SPECKLED TELLIN pair and a SUNRISE TELLIN pair (Clark’s finds) in with these fragile pieces too… Oh and my SCOTCH BONNET…
They all made it without breaking!
Since I got them home in one piece and they are still a little sandy… now to rinse and clean them. Most of these URCHINS and SEA BISCUITS were already pure white after being bleached out by the sun and sand so all we did is rinse them off while on vacation but didn’t do a great job. It’s a good thing I just wrote instructions for cleaning URCHINS from Sanibel before we left for vacation – for SEA URCHIN cleaning tutorial CLICK HERE.
I still have a few more containers with the tough solid shells and BEACH GLASS we found on our sailing trip in the BVIs so I’ll show my packing job on those for my next post. Until then…
PS- For more tips on packing fragile beach combing treasures for transporting home from your trip…
http://www.iloveshelling.com/blog/2014/08/01/packing-breakable-seashells-safely-for-traveling/
http://www.iloveshelling.com/blog/2013/02/02/shelling-trip-adventure-to-turks-and-caicos/
Great instructions Pam. Love the pictures. We got a little more snow today, but the sun came out and melted it. Are the sea urchins always white or did they get bleached by the sun. Can’t wait for more pictures. Pat
The heart urchins (se potatoes) are naturally white. The regular sea urchins are pale green and pale purple, and have been somewhat bleached out by the sun.
The white sea urchins would make very cute snowmen!
I have a friend on Nevis who does exactly that!
Rams horns! That’s what those are! Have found those before but couldn’t figure out what they were. Thanks! Such lovely pictures. I followed…and copied…your trip to Turks and Caicos (same house and everything!! It was fantastic!) and now want to copy a trip to BVI. Wow. Again, so lovely!! And with snow on the ground, even here in Alabama, I’m ready for some of that sun and turquoise water!
The Rams horns are the internal shell of a deepwater squid called the “stoplight squid” because it has a glowing red light on it. Strange but true.
Cool Rams Horns – we just found our first on a secluded part of Palomino Island off the coast of Fajardo, Puerto Rico. My son and I were amazed at how some thing so fragile survived the off shore reef and surf. I’m so surprised at what it is. We thought it was a sea horse tail – the glowing squid is even more fascinating. The larger end is concave and completely pearlized inside. Thanks so much for posting!
When we go to Grand Cayman every year, I pack a plastic drink pitcher. During the week, I use it for iced tea, then pack my good shells for the trip home. Sea urchins are always the most delicate.
This year, we were fortunate to get beautiful large conchs. The local fisherman gave them to us after he cleaned them for the conchs. We soaked them with bleach, then wrapped carefully in lots of plastic bags. When we got home the smell was pretty bad. I finally peeked into the cut at the top and saw that there was still black stuff inside. I scraped that out and resoaked, and the smell is fine now.
Wow, Pam! Great finds! I’ve been to the Virgin Islands twice and never found one shell.
Pam,
I think what you are calling sea biscuits are actually heart urchins. :)
Actually sea biscuits and heart urchins are two different animals.
Technically they are all urchins but you are right, we collected more heart urchins than sea biscuits. there are so many different kinds it would take me hours to ID them. do you know them all???? Do you have a collection? :)
I just have one question, do you not get stopped crossing borders because shells are considered a restrictive item even when empty?
Gladis, good question. 3 people in our group were randomly stopped to check our bags at the airport security and customs. They handled our shells and said nothing. Of course all of our shells are empty and most are pretty beach worn so there was no question whether they were live mollusks in their shells. I always research the FACTUAL rules and regs of places before I go and found nothing about restrictions besides the queen conchs. Since I have been asked about breaking the law before (ahem…. “accused”)- I may just do a blog post about the info I have found since it is too extensive to write in a comment reply.
Pam did you end up writing a post about the laws associated with shells in other countries? if so, what title is it under? if not no worries I know you must be a very busy gal! This does really interest me though. Our family went to NZ & found some amazing shells! We didn’t have any problems getting them through customs in Australia or the U.S. We hand carried them so they were at the ready for inspection & we had no problems. we do travel a bit and our fairly new found love of shelling will be at the top of our list of to do’s!
Hi Melanie- I started a post about it and never finished because it’s so dang hard to find laws about it. It’s like you have to be a scientist (or lawyer) to understand each law in each country. I got so frustrated, I gave up. Where in New Zealand did you find your amazing shells? I’m so intrigued about New Zealand!
Pam, Thanks for sharing. The BVI look gorgeous.
what a great trip you two had with lots of treasures especially the rams horns and the urchins and all the rest of the pristine shells beautiful. this is one of the reasons I love shelling—fun, sun,shells artistry at its best wallah!r.g.stein
r.g.- OMG! I took the shell belt you gave me on this trip- Its fantastic! I looked it up online and can’t find it, where did you buy it? I want to show it here on the blog and want to let people know where to get one just like it. thank you so much for such a thoughtful gift!
This trip I packed medicine bottles and plastic Tupperware. Wrapped in some tissue or paper towel worked nicely, except for the sand dollar. Have to wrap that one better. But all my little olives and augers and ceriths made it very well. Found my first few kitten’s paws … Every time I go shelling is just as exciting as that first shell. Also I like to find shell fossils … very cool.
brilliant to bring medicine bottles. but sand dollars are tough to pack! they need even more padding between each one than anything else. ….next time.
Love your packing tips, Pam! I always head to the beach with plastic containers and supplement with things like Pringles tubes (just the thing for bigger urchins wrapped in t.p.) and Gatorade bottles (wide-mouth is perfect for sea glass and sturdier but small shells). Two things I also pack are cotton balls (they are perfect for stuffing inside urchins) and extra t.p. (to wrap around the more fragile items). In 8 years of travelling to the Bahamas, I’ve only broken one sea biscuit – and I heard it crack when I clicked the top of a plastic container – it was just a bit too puffy for the container I put it in and the lid broke it. Sigh.
Thanks Ann- You reminded me to add my other posts with photos about packing shells so I did on the end of this post. I’ve always used Pringles cans (the best!) and Gatorade bottles in the past… but this time we didn’t buy Gatorade. we used regular water bottles and added “Powerade Zero Drops” with electrolytes. Its a small bottle you squirt in your water- we need that hydration too. Im not an expert on hydration products and all that but all I know is both Clark and I have been dehydrated on the beach and its awful- now we ALWAYS have water and since it said “electrolytes” we went for it. This was the first time we tried it and I was happy we did it- and it seemed more convenient. PS- breaking only ONE sea biscuit in 8 years is AWESOME ;)
This is great info! When we came back from Naples last spring, I didn’t think much about packaging my shells (i had them in a big plastic bag with newspaper and paper towels around them inside, surrounded by clothes in a suitcase). I lost ALL my sand dollars, an adorable baby double sunray venus, a bunch of crab shells, and a lot more. :( I went straight to your site (of course) and found a few good tips, but this helped a TON! Now i know what to do on the way back from Sanibel and Naples this spring! Thanks!
So helpful as always, thanks Pam!
Superb post, Pam. I am from France, and regularly visit your great website, as I love seashells, urchins, etc… from around the world and collect them (we visited Sanibel Island once in May 2011 and collected some sand dollars + seashells, but no purple sea urchins or potato / heart urchins, unfortunately …).
I would be really interested to know the latin names of the various sea urchins you found in the BVIs and on Sanibel, for my reference.
All these February posts on sea urchins make me really envy you ! ;-)
We can may be exchange further by e-mail on the subject. Thanks.
Hello Gorgeous,
Did you and Clark get to try any of the Roti’s or Painkillers while visiting Tortola? Chicken curry is my favorite.
Hey, for packing home fragile shells and Echinoderms, I use very sturdy cardboard boxes stuffed with dirty clothes for packing material. Amazon.com boxes are a great size too. One foot square boxes work extremely well. My luggage is a rolling duffle with soft sides and have used this method without much loss. I save boxes near trip time and arrange them like a puzzle inside the duffle to get as many to fit as possible. The multiple layers of boxes are sturdy. This is an inexpensive way to re-purpose an item most of us have laying around the garage or basement.
Reading about your time in the BVI has brought back fond memories of previous trips to Tortola. Thank you!
Hotlips
Do you ever mail your shells home? Last time I was in Sanibel, we drove there, so it was no big deal to bring all our shells back home with us. This year we are flying in and I was thinking about mailing them from the post office in Sanibel back home to NJ. Those medium sized boxes with the flat rate shipping wouldn’t be too bad at all.
I take peanut butter jars with me and I stuff them with socks on the way to Sanibel on the way back they are filled with fragile shells. I also take Crystal light which is packed in long plastic tubes. I ship most of my shells in ziplock bags with the air squeezed out. Then I surround them with socks or T-shirts. I have only had two shells broken this year out of two large Priority mail boxes of shells. I packed a fragile shell I bought in a hard plastic box inside of my checked suitcase. The shell was covered with cotton batting and I guess the TSA agent couldn’t see what was in it and broke the hinges off of the box getting it open. Fortunately the shell was ok. I guess they were nervous after seeing my tripod, net and a dozen heavy aluminum hangers in there with it.
So creative! I am going on a vacation next week and I want to take some shells from the beaches of Greece and now I know how to pack them in my suitcase. Thank you a lot for sharing these ideas!
Know this post is older but I wanted to ask about packing sea urchin for a move. We are a military family currently stationed in Hawaii. I haven’t found any whole sea urchin yet but I’ve collected several mostly intact pieces. What I’m concerned about is how much jostling our packed goods will go through on the shipment back across the Pacific. I have already sealed them with the glue wash (from your video) and then with a clear acrylic spray. I’m hoping that will help preserve their beautiful purple hue. Do you have any other suggestions packing the? Thanks.