Shells of the Saltwater Mangroves

Unfortunately, I didn't remember to bring my camera to Sanibel and I wasn't sure I wanted to haul the DSLR out to the beach, which makes me think that I should invest in a pocket sized one. But that's a conversation for another time.

The only photos I have are of my Sanibel haul. I've finally gotten around to washing them out and letting them dry.

My original plan for collecting all of these was to put a few in the fish tank. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten how many plants are now in those fishtanks.

What I'lle ventually do with these shells is currently up in the air, but they're a little too pretty to throw away. So for now, they are now on the kitchen counter unti I can find a suitable container for them.

If you look closely at some of them, some of the shells are more bulbous on one side than the other. It was explained to us during our tour of the marine sanctuary that one was a conch and the other was something else. Which ones they are though I couldn't begin to tell you because I've completely forgotten!

But one thing that I discovered was incredibly fascinating was that of the mangrove trees. They live in a marine environment, meaning that they have to get their water from the salt water in the ocean. But if they sucked the water in, they'd wither and die from the salt, except that they have developed a system inside themselves to filter out the salt and use the freshwater that remained.

And as we were coming in to shore, two male dolphins came right beside the boat and swam with us for a little while. Florida has a catch and release program and the dolphins have learned that the fish have already lost all their fight and are easy catches when tossed back into the ocean. They were two males who have bonded as teenagers and will travel and hunt together for the rest of their lives. For about ten minutes, we were able to watch wild dolphins swimming around the boat. And it was fantastic. It is apparantly a rare sight.