The Sanibel-Captiva Shell Club is kicking off the New Year with two exciting events on Sunday, January 12th. The January meeting of the Sanibel-Captiva Shell Club will be held at the Sanibel Recreation Center at 3880 Sanibel-Captiva Road on Sanibel. Noted shell expert Kevan Sunderland will be presenting “One Hundred and Fifty Years of Discovery” – a look at the malacological discoveries from the 1820’s through the 1960’s including vessels, crews, scientific equipment and shells discovered.
Sunderland grew up in the Florida Keys where he became a shell collector at an early age. Even through high school, Kevan’s collection and documentation of shells of the Florida Keys was well recognized amongst his peers. His college years were spent in Key West where he had hundreds of shrimp boats, lobster boats and other commercial fisheries saving shells for him. By the time he graduated from FAU with a degree in biology, he had already amassed one of the largest private collections of Caribbean shells. A Silent Auction begins at 1:30pm, and the meeting begins at 2pm in the Pelican Room. This is a hybrid meeting, so club members will receive a ZOOM link for the meeting via email in case they are unable to attend. The meeting is open to the public.
Also, the Shell Club is partnering with the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum for a Live Mollusk Count on Sanibel Beaches on January 12th. Participants will be counting and identifying live mollusks in groups of two or more. The Museum will use this data to benchmark the health and prevalence of local mollusk species. For more information, please contact Jorden Falker at [email protected].
The Sanibel-Captiva Shell Club awards grants from the proceeds of its annual shell show. Grants are given towards education and research in the fields of conchology and malacology, as well as for conservation and water quality projects, primarily in Southwest Florida. For more information, or to join the club, please visit the shell club’s website at http://sanibelshellclub.com.
