I get asked this question quite a lot so I figured why not create a blog post that answers that question. I’ll keep this short and sweet. Pictured here are all the books I currently use and below the photos is a list of books I’m looking into purchasing that were just recently suggested to me. Also, I’ve listed websites I use. Got a book you’d like to suggest? Feel free to leave a comment.
The open book (lost the book jacket) is the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Seashells.
Books on my list to purchase:
Seashells of Southern Florida: Living Marine Mollusks of the Florida Keys and Adjacent Regions: Bivalves by Paula M. Mikkelsen and Rudiger Bieler
Bahamian seashells: A thousand species from Abaco, Bahamas by Colin Redfern
Encyclopedia of Texas Seashells: Identification, Ecology, Distribution, and History (Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies Series) by Tunnell Jr., John W., Andrews, Jean, Barrera, Noe C, Moretzs
Update Sept. 11, 2025: Recently I’ve learned that there are false Large/Rosy Strigilla’s too. I’m not quite good at the identification of the difference—one difference is in the scaring where the mollusk was attached to the shell. Here is a graphic I made based on the information found on Mattesonart.com
Original Post: Oh, how I love picking up these little pink shells—Rose Petal Tellins! I find a lot of them on the west coast of Florida. In my experience at Fort Myers Beach and Tigertail Beach on Marco Island I seem to find them in more abundance than other west coast beaches. How fun these are to find—that pretty pop of pink in the sand. I’ve ran into a few over my way on my east coast beaches too, but I noticed that they were more circular in shape and smaller, so I called them the east coast version of a rose petal…until!
On one of my YouTube beach walks I was featuring one of these cute little babies and a fellow shelling channel, “Shell Stories” commented on my video and said that he thinks the cute little pink circular shell I mentioned was a “Large Strigilla” instead. He was correct! WOW how awesome to realize that my east coast version of a rose petal was actually a different species altogether, but they are both a part of the same family, “Tellinidae.”
The Rose Petal Tellin, Eurytellina lineata (Turton, 1819) has a slight triangle shape and length of 1–1.5 inches long. These are pleasantly pink shells but they also have a white presentation, sometimes with a splash of pink at the umbo of the shell (the hinge “tip”). Typically found on the west coast of Florida but can be found on the east coast too (distribution: Western Central Atlantic).
The Large Strigilla, Strigilla carnaria (Linnaeus, 1758) has a circular shape and length of 0.5–1 inch long. These are pink to pale pink. Found on the east coast of Florida (distribution: North America).
In these photos you can see the differences in these two shells. So happy to have learned that my little pink rose petals I was finding on the east coast of Florida were actually Large Strigillas.
If you watched my YouTube video from my Fort Myers Beach walk after storm Debby. Here is that painting that was under the shells when I was showing my shell finds. I painted this with some friends at a guided painting social.
Sea Turtle nesting season in Florida is between March and October. White light flashlights should not be used on the beach during these months. If needing a light you can use turtle safe lights such as red-light. Also during these months you cannot dig in dry sand. Click HERE to learn more at FloridaStateParks.org.
Florida sea turtle nesting numbers were record-breaking in 2023: 76,645 green sea turtle nests were counted in Florida; State-wide statistics from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) counted 133,941 loggerhead sea turtle nests.
Updated Post, Sept. 11, 2025: Learning about olive “forms” has been quite confusing. These brown olives in particular. From what I can gather put simply southeast Florida has 2 species. Note: I’m trying to keep current with the name trails on WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species) : 1) Oliva sayana (Ravenel, 1834) which is the Lettered Olive 2) Oliva nivosa (Marrat, 1871) which is the Netted Olive >> old name is Oliva reticularis and accepted alternative name by WoRMS is Oliva (Americoliva) nivosa
Original Post: The first time I heard of a Fulgurator Olive (Oliva fulgurator, Röding, 1798) was when a friend of mine showed me the one her daughter collected on Sanibel Island and was trying to figure out what it was. The next experience I had with them was finding them myself in dredge piles in Palm Beach! Wow those were the HOT shells to find in the piles there for sure! I pulled lots of them out of the dredge piles in 2 different color forms, at that time not knowing the difference I used the name Fulgurator and Bollingi interchangeably (as most other shellers did at those piles).
Fulgurator Olives in forms bifasciata and formosa. Photo credit Roxann Morin.
When I uploaded those dredging episodes to my YouTube channel, I received some comments that lead me to the correct form names for the ones I found. They were all “Fulgurator” Olives but I had found 2 different “forms” of them. I found the forms bifasciata and form formosa. Which are both brown olives. A bollingi is a form of Fulgurator Olive but the bollingi form is not brown like the ones I found. I have learned that there are about 7 different forms of Fulgurator Olives: bifasciata bollingi circinate formosa jamaicensis olorinella reticularis
In researching these I’ve come across several different name combinations of the 7 different Fulgurator forms. Then I landed on the website “Let’s Talk Seashells” by Marlo F. Krisberg, I was SO happy to find a comprehensive chart on Fulgurators with the 7 different forms of them and that chart page on his site is connected to Jaxshells which goes into even more detail!
In looking at this chart I noticed the Fulgurator form reticularis which is commonly referred to as a Netted Olive (Oliva reticularis) and one comment on my YouTube video about a Fulgurator, was it wasn’t a Fulgurator olive it was Oliva bifasciata but bifasciata IS a “form” of Fulgurator…you see how these names/forms can get confusing? The fact of the matter is that Oliva fulgurator has been presented under several names due to its diverse color variations. It’s like a puzzle of a multiform species.
That’s right. I was SO surprised to learn of this myself. It all started when I stumbled across a comment on SWF Beachlife’s YouTube video I was watching in early April where a viewer commented saying they heard it was illegal to take dead coral off Florida beaches. I just couldn’t believe that and did a fast google search and the info I initially found at www.myfwc.com was “not very clear.” From what I read it seemed to be speaking of rules governing the “commercial” harvest of corals. So confused that night of learning this I decided to call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission myself in the morning to speak with someone who could clarify this for me.
Stony Coral at John D. MacArthur Beach State Park in Palm Beach County, Photo by Roxann Morin
The next morning I called and spoke with Lane Garrett from FWC Marine Fishery Management who kindly explained it all, and yes, it’s illegal to collect stony and fire corals even if they are dead from Florida beaches. There have been several Acts (laws) over the years passed to help in efforts to protect Florida’s 358 mile Reef Tract that spans from the Dry Tortugas to the St. Lucie Inlet. It can get confusing researching these laws, but in a nutshell this is what I found out:
According to the Florida Marine Resources Act (FMRA), it is illegal to take coral, living or dead, from Florida’s beaches and coral reefs.Florida Administrative Code Chapter 68B-42 (68B-42.009) says it unlawful to take or possess any coral, dead or alive, from the waters/beaches of Florida.
One of the latest protection measures Mr. Garrett spoke of was in 2009, the Florida Legislature passed the Florida’s Coral Reef Protection Act (CRPA) to increase protection of coral reef resources off the coasts of Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties. The CRPA makes it illegal to anchor on or otherwise damage coral reefs in Florida.
In all the social media shelling groups I’m in, I can’t believe I’ve never heard of this before. On any given day you can see a lot of people posting their shell finds with dead stony corals. This law needs more awareness that is for sure. When speaking with Mr. Garrett I told him that they really need to start posting this coral law on beach signs because people just “don’t know”—to put it right there in conjunction where they have “no live shelling” they need to speak of not taking dead stony and fire corals. He actually said he would put that in for a request! So, who knows maybe one day we’ll start seeing it on Florida beach signs.
Thank you to all who entered for a chance to win FBW’s 1K Subs Giveaway. Most entries wrote such a nice encouraging note along with their entry and I want to thank each and everyone of you who did that!! It means SO much as a new channel starting out on YouTube! There were 122 total entries.
Drumroll please……..and the winner of FBW’s 1K Subs Giveaway goes to:
Visiting Little Talbot Island State Park my daughter and I found lots of live augers in the swash zone, where the waves run-up and -down the sand. It was amazing seeing and holding them! In researching which type of auger shells they were I had a hard time making an identification. They were either Gray Atlantic (Hastula cinerea) or Salle’s Augers (Hastula salleana).
I reached out to the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum & Aquarium to see if I could get some additional guidance over searching online and the shell books I have. José H. Leal, Ph.D., Science Director & Curator there informed me that, “the only apparent ‘decisive’ distinction is the microsculpture of tiny perforations.” He let me know that ‘some’ say because they are so similar they say they are one and the same taxon. Dr. Leal sent me a shell-level comparison LINK that was helpful. He didn’t make an identification of the augers we found on Little Talbot Island. I did send him screen shots of them; but he would have to have the shell in hand to ID it.
Salle’s Augers (Hastula salleana) have microscopic pinpoints and are smaller than Gray Atlantics (Hastula cinerea) at around 1/2 inch, whereas the Gray Atlantic Augers are about 1 inch and the shell surface has numerous rows of microscopically fine, incised spiral lines. I got that information from the book, “A Guide to Field Identification Seashells of North America,” by Tucker Abbott. Which is a very good book with beautiful detailed illustrations of shells drawn by George F. Sandstrom. It’s an old book from 1968 but I was happy to land a used copy on Amazon.
After reviewing the shell-level comparison and referring to Abbott’s book, I believe the augurs we found were Gray Atlantic Augers (Hastula cinerea). What made me decide was studying the lip and ribs of the body whorl of the shells from the shell-level comparison LINK and from Abbott’s book where he refers to their sizes. The ones we found, in my hand were approximately 1” or larger based on how they were laying against my fingers using that to measure them. Also, the illustrations in Abbott’s book of them is very well-illustrated.
Personally, I think that they could very well be labeled the same species with two forms.
I’m Roxann and I’ve lived in Florida just about my entire life. I fell in love with shelling during Covid where my kids and I decided to start checking out every beach we could that summer with not much else to do with so many places closed. We would be tourist on our coast; hitting several beaches along the east and then branching out to the west coast of Florida. I found my first “real” shell on Honeymoon Island…it was a Florida Fighting Conch seashell and from that shell on I was hooked!
I’ve been wanting to start a YouTube channel for over 3 years and something just always seemed to get in the way. January of 2024, I put my foot down with myself and started that channel, Florida Beach Walks! My husband was a huge part in that to thank for the constant encouragement over the years–thx Corey! I have lots of shell walks to share and 3 months in to this channel I tell myself, “and why did I wait for so long?!!” Everything in its time I guess and what’s that saying, “better late than never,” lol. So if you like being at the beach, shelling, looking for sea glass, sunrise/sets, checking out the critters etc., then come walk with me alongside some of my exciting beach adventures on YouTube!
