Shell hunting at night in Galveston.

Obviously Galveston has given up on the idea of sea turtles. All the beaches along the gulf and Atlantic have forbidden lights on the beaches at night so the turtles can lay eggs and the babies can find their way to the water by the light of the moon. Galveston has a well lit highway and Ferris wheel overlooking their beach, and I was not the only one who brought a flashlight down to check out the 11pm low tide. 

All the shells here seem to be made of brittle, translucent, paper thin material, and it is only with great care I could even pick them up without crumbling. But I had a lot of fun and was surprised by the number of animals I saw. 

This Angel Wing shell eluded us in Sanibel. No wonder. Most of the ones I found were broken. 

Now I will show you horrible blurry phone night pictures and try to convince you they're cool. 

I saw something long and wiggly and caught this burrowing shrimp out of his hole. I barely snapped this before he'd covered himself back up. 

I saw a jellyfish too, which made barefoot shelling by flashlight even more exciting. 

A blue fun crab the size of a salad plate charged a school of fish right out of the water. (These are not from blue fin but I will find some to post soon!)

I was so excited to find this eel with a face the size of a tick tack. What? You can't see him? He's right there!

Any better?

I was super excited to find this. 

It's a barnacle cluster with three or four different species on it from shot glass size to pinky size. It was beautiful! Alas, when I picked it up, my finger sunk into the distinct squishy sensation that is a sea anemone. A closer inspection revealed one of the barnacles was still alive. One jerk barnacle and one bitchy sea anemone and I couldn't have this beautiful ocean sculpture. Don't think I didn't consider killing them in bleach! But I couldn't. Would have probably taken out the color anyway. After much debating, I threw it out to sea. 

But like the old sailor proverb says:

If you love something, but your love will cause the death of invertebrates that will smell up your trailer, set it free. If it was meant to be, the sea will send you a replacement sans squishy things. 

Cheers!