Do Beaches Need Seashells?

Seashells are a pretty sight on beaches, but it turns out that they play an important role in seaside structures and ecosystems. Learn why -- and why shell poaching is a problem -- in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam. Here, we humans tend to
enjoy the ocean, so it makes sense that we'd want
to take a piece of at home with us. But
be warned, beachside souvenir hunting can land you in prison
if you go overboard. Case in point, early in summer

(00:22):
of a Texas woman was find five hundred dollars and
sentenced to fifteen days in jail by a Florida judge
for illegally harvesting forty queen conk shells on her Key
West vacation. Queen counk's are marine snails who live in
gorgeous shells of their own making. Florida allows people to
collect the vacant shells, but it's illegal to take one
that's still occupied by a live conk. The shells that

(00:42):
the aforementioned Texan took had living, breathing mollusks in them.
Florida has a vested interest in these nautical treasures. On
the shell loaded island of Santabelle, a barrier community near
Fort Myers beachcombing is a major draw for tourists, and
when residents noticed their precious commodity were vanishing, they took action.
In the late twentieth century, locals started worrying that out

(01:04):
of towners were pillaging too many shells. As a conservation measure,
Santabell banned the collection of any shells with their original
mollusks still living inside, as well as any sand dollars, starfish,
and sea urchins. The band took effect in and has
since been extended throughout Santabell's home county. If you've noticed
sea shell depletion on the beaches you visit, know that

(01:25):
it's not just a matter of light fingered vacationers. Organized
poaching has become a serious global concern. We spoke via
email with Vincent Nyman, an anthropology professor at Oxford Brooks
University in the United Kingdom. In a study he co authored,
Nyman documented the illegal trade of Indonesia's protected shells. The
Indonesian government keeps a list of mollusks that are legal

(01:47):
to trade or collect within the republic's jurisdiction. Chambered nautilus's,
triton's trumpets, and some giant clams are among the creatures
ostensibly protected by law. There Yet, poaching is rampant. Nyman's
paper tells of twenty illegal shipments that were intercepted by
the Indonesian authorities between two thousand eight and put together,
these busts yielded more than forty two thousand shells of

(02:09):
protected species, valued at seven hundred thousand dollars. Niman said,
it's very important to note that we're not talking about
individual tourists collecting a couple of shells on the beach,
putting them in their suit case in bringing them home.
We're talking about a large scale commercial trade where the
shells are collected by active fishing, scuba diving cages, et cetera,
and where entire sections of the ocean floor are emptied.

(02:32):
He stresses the poachers like to grab occupied shells and
then destroy the animals within them. He explained that when
the animals are alive, their shells are usually an excellent condition,
as opposed to shells that have been discarded and washed
up on the beach, which are often damaged. Mosques aren't
the only animals who have been hurt by the reckless
over hunting of seashells. When stales, nautiluses and other sea

(02:52):
animals die of natural causes other creatures like to move
into their former shell homes. We also spoke via email
with my Koluski, an ecologist at the University of Florida.
He said the most obvious examples are hermit crabs, which
use empty shells as protective armor. There are, in fact,
many marine habitats where it's hard to find an empty
shell because hermit crabs in habit almost all of them.

(03:15):
When there aren't enough shells to go around, hermit crab
populations are curved, and housing is just one service that
unused shells offer. Some sea creatures and birds eat them
for mineral supplements like calcium carbonate. Others use the sturdy
shells as anchors from other mollusks to barnacles and many more.
The harvest of these shells isn't just bad for the
local ecosystem, it's also bad for the environment and ultimately

(03:38):
for the humans who live and visit there. Take Yarga Beach,
a lovely slice of the Iberian Peninsula loocated in Slow Spain.
It's a hot vacation destination that's enjoyed increasing popularity. Wanting
to know more about how this rise in human activity
was affecting the ecosystem, Koluski rolled up his sleeves and
hit the scene. From July nineteen seventy eight through July one,

(03:58):
he and his colleagues put together monthly catalogs of all
the seashell material they could find on Yarga Beach. Kaluski
returned decades later for a new round of surveys, beginning
in two thousand eight and ending his discoveries weren't encouraging tourism.
Data revealed an almost threefold increase in visitation between nineteen
During that same period, the number of seashells on Yarga

(04:20):
Beach fell by more than six coincidence probably not. Other
beach side communities should be worried about the same kind
of decline in seashells, and not just for environmental reasons.
Shells tend to break up into particles that are bigger
than typical sand grains. These shell fragments help beaches fight
erosion by locking up, making it harder for winds, waves,

(04:41):
and water currents to move shoreline sediment around. If we
remove too many seashells, it will become harder for our
beaches to resist the forces of erosion, and that could
affect shore side buildings, roads and other infrastructure. So what's
the solution? Nyman notes, in many countries there are excellent
laws in placed prevent over harvesting. Companies and individuals should

(05:03):
follow the existing regulations and the authorities should enforce them.
It is an economic crime and should be handled as such.
He added, the prosecutors and judges must take large scale
poaching operations more seriously. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini,
whose name I've been mispronouncing for about two years now,

(05:24):
and it was produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is
a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more
in this and lots of other multidisciplinary topics, visit our
home planet, how stuff Works dot com. And for more
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