What Is a Conscientious Sheller?

If you take a reasonable amount of shells without animals living inside and do not permanently disturb the habitats of mollusks, you do not adversely affect the shell population. Thus, you are a conscientious sheller who follows practices that are environmentally sound and respect the rights of other shellers to collect specimens.

Why Is Shelling Fun?

1. Who doesn't like going to the beach?
2. It can involve the entire family from older preschoolers who know not to digest shells through grandparents who bring chairs or stools to rest from shelling now and then.
3. It combines the thrill of the hunt with appreciation of the beautiful shapes and colors of nature.
4. It can become a "seriously friendly" competition between participants.
5. It doesn't harm anyone since the animals have already vacated their shells when we collect them.

What is Shelling?

The best definition to describe it for our purposes is:

Shelling is the act of
viewing, inspecting, and gathering seashells
on or near a beach.

What Is a Shell?

This definition is the best one I've seen.

"The shell is the outer skeleton of the soft-bodied mollusk…composed of calcium carbonate, a common component of the mineral salts in seawater."

from Shells: Treasures of the Sea by Leonard Hill
Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc. 1996, p. 67