shelling diaries 2026 | part one

Shelling diaries part — a quick note to anchor this piece for readers.

Shelling diaries part: Quick notes

We are back in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, for Spring Break.  We love coming this time of year because it’s still “off season”, so it isn’t crowded, and it’s rarely overly hot.  We can still have some warm, sticky days, and we do risk having gloomy, cold days that aren’t great for the beach, but we have found this is a good window for our crew.  I’m often asked what the water temperature is here in early March.  I always wade up to about my knees and sometimes my waist if the shelling is good.  It’s cold, but feels refreshing on a sunny day. I couldn’t even begin to guess the water temperature, but I looked it up, and it’s 59º today.  There are a few people swimming, but many of them wear wetsuits this time of year.

The highlight of my beach trips is always the shelling.  If you’ve been around for a few years, you probably know about the now-famous shell collection competition.  If you’re not familiar with it, my mom and I collect shells throughout our trip and then have a contest, judged by my Instagram followers, to determine the best collection.  My mom always wins by a mile.  I mean, it’s never a nail-biter, we never need a recount, and it’s never even looked like I might pull it out.  Last year was my best showing, and I still only garnered 23% of the vote.  That was a whole 10% higher than the previous year, though, so I’m gaining some ground.

While it’s ideal to go shelling around low tide, we go out every morning, no matter where it lands in the tide cycle.  Morning is better for me since I’ve developed a sun allergy (which is super annoying at the beach), and we’ll sometimes go out again for a later afternoon or evening low tide, but the shelling is always best first thing in the morning.

The first morning of shelling was humid and still.  The temperature was only in the mid-70s, but it still felt unpleasantly warm because of the stickiness and the intense morning light refracting off the haze.  It was the kind of morning that had me walking through the water more often to stay cool.  Initially, we weren’t finding any shells.  I mean, there were a few small scallops, oysters, and shell fragments collected at the high tide line, but there was very little in the surf, in the tide pools, or on the flats exposed during low tide.  We decided to just keep walking.   I have walked almost the entire length of Isle of Palms during my visits over the years, and I’ve learned that one stretch of beach can be bare and another can be loaded with shells.

After about 1/4 to 1/2 mile of walking, we started to see more shells, and then there were large piles to look through.  The first shell I found was a tiny lettered olive shell.

Actually, I did find a nice little gray whelk the evening we arrived, but someone had discarded it by the beach sign, so that didn’t really count.

Once I found the little olive shell, though, we started finding more.  Whelks were washing up as the tide was coming in, and I was able to pluck quite a few.  I found a few nice-sized olives in the shell piles.

And some whelks that were partially buried in the sand.

This was my haul after our first outing…

In addition to my favorites, olives and whelks, I found some pieces of coral, a fossil, and a few “whelk ribbons” that I found beautiful.

Day two, we walked further down the beach, and I found a bunch of broken whelks.  Typically, broken shells aren’t desirable for shell-seekers.  For me, some broken shells are great finds, some of my favorites, even.  They break in an interesting, sculptural way.  Other shells are broken in a way that doesn’t appeal to me, either, and I chuck them back into the surf.  I just won’t know until I see it.  It’s entirely subjective.  I ended up with a full shell bag, and even put a few back that I thought I liked initially, and then changed my mind.  I am trying to be a bit more selective!

Jeff joined Mom and me on shelling morning three.  I welcomed the teammate because I need all the help I can get to avoid repeat embarrassment this year.  All three of us found some olive shells in the surf.  Jeff gave his find to me, naturally.  Mom found a small whelk and asked me to clean it off for her in a tide pool as she gloated.

Since Jeff was covering the surf, I searched up along the high tide line with my mom.  When we joined up again, he handed my mom two small, intact whelks, even one of my favorite gray whelks!  I called him a traitor.

I found a few whelks on my own, but it might’ve been one of our worst shelling mornings ever.  We ran into a few other beachcombers who come here every year, and they expressed a similar sentiment.  We’re hoping for a big storm offshore to bring more shells to the beach.   Even the tide pools, which are usually reliably good shelling spots, were mostly empty.

The bottom row is my shell finds from day three…

We reference Shelling diaries part briefly to keep the thread coherent.