Taryn The Shell

🤍 winter solstice 🌞
Stunning morning to learn about nature observation & pencil sketching with the artist 🎨 in residence 💙
Meant to be focusing on birds 🐦 🤭
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on

🃏 Week 25 of 2026 from the Broome Shells deck is...
Moonsnail in the Gastropod suit ♣

Because the moon snail is common at Cable Beach, it's sometimes overlooked. I find the form and colouration particularly remarkable, notice the protoconch (first-shell) top tip of the spiral in the photo. The mollusc is predatory, eating other molluscs (bivalves and gastropods) by moving over them with their foot, then drilling through the shell with a sandpapery tongue called a radula. It leaves two round holes in the prey, one slightly inset of the other, which upon closer inspection looks like little teeth have chomped around it. Have you seen shells with these (nearly perfect) round holes in them? Another glorious trademark of the moon snail is their egg casings. There's two different types made by slightly different species. One is called a sand collar and looks like a man-made rubbery gasket. The other is clear jelly in the shape of a broken donut. Both contain thousands of eggs and sometimes wash up onto Cable Beach. When the eggs hatch into the sea, the baby shell is a microscopic mollusc animal which doesn't have a shell yet. It swims around using tiny hairs (cilia) eating tiny food and using carbon with calcium to start making it's shell. At this early stage the mollusc is part of the plankton world and could be eaten by other animals such as whales! As the animal and its shell grows (in a clockwise spiral), it sinks to the bottom of the ocean to continue life as a snail with a foot to move along. It can dive below the sand to hide from predators, has a proboscis to sniffer for danger, food, and a mate. Thus the circle of mollusc life continues...

Want to play? Pick which card to see next 👉🏽 comment on this post ⤵️

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🎁 the boys brought this back from London for me 😲
I laughed out loud trying on the different accessories, soo fun 🤠😎💁🏽‍♀️
Who's your favourite:
1. Country shell belle with suppawt 🐕
2. Dry season cover up story (bad hair day) 🧣
3. Red salt curls get the twirls 🐚🐚🐚
Oh My Gastropod, love love love!

Turtally awesome 🩷🩵💜

🐢 Turtally awesome 💙
🌏 World sea turtle day 🐢
Sharing my brother's post card again, thanks to the printing workshop & stamps by 💙
We saw a sea turtle IRL during his visit, you can often see them at high tide from Town Beach jetty ⛩️
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🦋 colour & predation hole 🕳 on this coquina clam 😍
Tiny hole means a tiny predator mollusc for this tiny clam... a tiny meal 🍽
Can you imagine the mollusc battle?

Butterfly or coquina or tiny clams
Many names, pretty things ✨️🤍✨️
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