♪ opening music ♪ ♪ Hello, I'm Wayne Phillips.

You know, the beaches of South Carolina attract a lot of visitors for a lot of different reasons.

Nightlife, golf, good seafood and fun in the sun are just a few of the more popular attractions.

If you've ever gone beach combing at the coast, you've probably been to a beach a lot like this one on Edisto Island, looking for shells.

And that's just what we'll be doing today.

As always, on Naturescene, our guide and teacher will be Rudy Mancke, the curator of natural history for the South Carolina Museum Commission.

Rudy, what do you think we'll find today?

>> Wayne, I think today is going to be a perfect day to look not only for remains of animals and plants that are living with us today, but also to even look for some fossil material.

This is a great beach for fossil material.

Elephant teeth, shark teeth and such all mixed together.

And Edisto is a great place also, of course, for shells that most people will be looking for.

<Wayne> On our way down here.

You said that Edisto Island is the place to go.

Why?

<Rudy> Well, I think there are a whole lot of reasons for it.

Let me give you two or three.

Probably.

One thing that's very important is that the island itself is bordered on the north side by the North Edisto River and on the south side by the South Edisto.

A great amount of water washing in the ocean, a current that brings material in and dumps it, so to speak, into the ocean.

And that gives us material to wash up here.

The ocean off shore here is fairly shallow.

There are lots of reefs and many animals like to live in that kind of situation.

And so their bodies end up on the beach, you see when they die.

So that combination of currents and shallow ocean and offshore reefs probably make this place the special place that it is.

Matter of fact, it's so special.

Why don't we just get started now and see what we can see?

>>Lead the way.

>>The best way to go maybe will be right over here.

It's a nice big sponge.

We want to take a look at.

Wayne, look, we're not the only ones visiting the body of, of this sponge.

See all the little flies on it?

There are quite a few insects here on the beach that take advantage of any remains that are washed in that they can still use.

These are generally feeding on soft tissue, maybe the remains of the animals that used to live there.

This sponge, which to most people looks like a plant, I imagine is really an animal.

And as you say, you can feel it.

It's very spongy.

Look like I can squeeze out water from the inside of this sponge.

The spaces in this sponge used to be filled with bodies of animals that are living together.

And this is really, in a sense, their skeleton.

The part of the animals that are left behind.

The rest of the bodies are pretty well decayed.

And of course, these flies are coming to serve up what's left of those bodies.

Very few insects, of course, live out in the ocean, but a lot of them come in to the edge of the ocean to get food.

What you got?

<Wayne> I've seen these laying all over the beach.

What's this?

<Rudy> All right.

This is the most, one of the most common shells that we've got on the beaches in South Carolina.

And most people call these conch shells.

It's really not a true conch shell at all.

It's one of the whelks spelled w-h-e-l-k.

Okay, whelk.

This one is known as the knobbed whelk because of these very distinctive knobs that you see running around very obvious even in the smaller shell, a very closely related variety.

Another species is right over here.

Let's just just get it and look at it together.

This one is, you see, doesn't have any knobs at all.

It does have some channels here that are very deep running around it.

And so we call this the channeled whelk.

And both of these whelks are again, common in South Carolina.

These are a snail now that lives in the ocean.

Which part of that shell you think goes first in the animal?

<Wayne> I would think this end goes first.

<Rudy> Wrong.

Just think about the animal.

See, he doesn't ...see very well and he certainly can't see behind him well, and so the part of your body that you'd love to protect is the rear.

And if his body was my hand, as it comes out of the shell, you've got your eyes to protect your front.

You protect your rear flank with the thick part of the shell.

And so most of these shells, if you left them up like this, knowing that this is forward or right handed, okay, there are very few shells that are actually left handed with the opening on the left side to whelks.

And these are an example of the univalves, the shells on the beach that only have one side to them, one valve.

Let me show you one other one here that is a very common one also, that is one of the bivalves.

So we've only got half of this shell.

This one is known as the Quahog or Cohog hard shelled clam.

It's very easy to identify by the purplish on the inside.

And this is one of the clams that man has used for a long time for food, along with these oyster shells that we commonly see.

These are the two most commonly used shells as far as food is concerned.

Of course, you eat the body that's gone.

These are remains of the animals that were once doing very well off shore.

Well, there's a lot more to see.

Maybe we can just leave this sponge.

I want to pick that back up, though, and take it.

Take it back with us.

Let's see what we can find further down.

<Wayne>Rudy, what are all these things we're walking on?

They're oyster shells, aren't they?

<Rudy> Right, Wayne, These are this beach is littered with oyster shells.

These live in salt marsh areas, not really in the open ocean, but the ocean has covered an old salt marsh area here and exposed them.

Grab those sand dollars.

Let me just show you one other thing over here before we walk by it now.

Hang onto those sand dollars a minute.

This is one shell that is, as you see, a pretty good size, very common on the beaches in South Carolina.

And I think if you look at it, it's obvious that this is one of the bivalves that we were talking about there.

There are two halves to the shell.

This one gets its name from the fact that it looks like the old writing pens that were used back during the colonial period with feathers on the end.

And this is called a sea pen.

This is the knobbed sea pen.

Again, because of these knobs on the the back end of the shell.

There are quite a few things here that we maybe ought to take a look at.

If you can reach that big shell right there.

This is one of the animals down here that is a killer.

It's a predator feeding on other types of shell animals.

This one is called a moon snail.

Another name for it is a shark's eye, because of this brownish or sometimes purplish eye looking shape here at the bottom.

And this is one of the marine snails.

He's got a tremendously large foot with a a tongue in the bottom of the foot that has very sharp spines on it.

And what he does, basically, there's another one.

He has to take that tongue.

>> Yeah.

<Rudy> Take that tongue.

And let's see.

Look, take that tongue and drill a hole in one of these clams, one of the bivalves, and then crunch the body of the bivalve and slurp it up and feeds actually on animals like this ark shell or like one of those clams that we saw a few moments ago.

So these moon snails are really predators.

And as you can see from the end of this one, look, sometimes they actually prey upon each other.

These live mainly in the sand.

And our sandy beaches, of course, support large numbers of these things.

Let me see those sand dollars a minute just for a second.

You had them in your pocket there.

Now, take a look at these things a minute.

These are again, very common in sand.

And again, we call them sand dollars because you usually find them on sandy beaches.

This, of course, is not one of the the shelled animals really, not like one of these these mollusks which make a very hard shell, although they do make a type of shell around themselves.

They're not really in the same category.

Five holes, five markings on the shell.

And this is characteristic of sand dollars.

And they're very close relatives of starfish, and kin.

<Wayne> Why is this one white?

and this one a brownish color?

<Rudy> Well, these things, when they're first when they're really alive in the ocean, have more of a purplish color about them.

And then as they get washed in and down the beach, that purple changes to a brown.

And then eventually when it gets sun bleached, you get a nice white color.

This is not really what the animal looks like when he's alive.

This is just the skeleton, in a sense, left after he's dead.

And of course, this opening on the bottom is the opening for the mouth.

This thing feeds on small worms and such out in the sand.

He's a predator.

But there's also and this is unbelievable here, because you don't find many of these.

This is also prey for another predator.

This is the state shell of North Carolina.

And it also lives in South Carolina and down toward Brazil.

It's called a Scotch bonnet.

And this shell, which looks so nice and beautiful, is another one of the predators feeding almost exclusively on starfish and their kin.

The markings are in pretty bad shape.

Notice what's attached to this shell What do you call those things?

<Wayne> Barnacles.

<Rudy> Barnacles.

And they're real common.

Barnacles swim during their lifetime rather freely and then settle down and become adults on shells.

They can't attach to that sand out there very easily, see.

So they actually attach to something solid like this shell.

<Wayne> What did this, the name Scotch Bonnet come from?

>> I think the markings look like the plaid marking that we associate with the Scotch people.

And it's one of the bonnet shells.

So the name's Scotch Bonnet.

This is, again, one of the marine snails.

A univalve.

Right?

It only has one vial.

Another name for these univalves are gastro pods, which means stomach foot.

The foot and the mouth are really.

I mean, the stomach and the mouth are really in the foot of the animal stomach foot.

Well, let's see what else we can see.

I think one thing we need to mention anyway, right now is the fact that this beach does have some rather big pieces of wood on it.

And when you look carefully, you can identify two types of trees here.

This one that's lying over to the side of us is one of the state trees of our state.

Now, dead of course, the palmetto.

Very common on the barrier islands like Edisto.

And this tree here that's so nicely bleached by the sun and smooth by the wave action, is what's left of one of the live oaks.

And again, a live oak is very typical of these barrier islands.

Just let's just look at this.

You can see how beautifully worked this piece of wood is and the wind blowing the sand and the wave action now has really fashioned this into something that's very, very beautiful.

And you see the ocean is continuing to come in and take away a little in South Carolina and carry it back into the ocean.

And of course, in a real sense, that continental shelf out there is just as much South Carolina as the part we're standing on now.

<Wayne> Rudy, where did these come from?

<Rudy> Well, Wayne, these were actually trees that were growing here on some rather high ground.

The ocean continues to come in and take away high ground.

And as you can see just behind us here, for instance, that's left over salt marsh that has been taken back by the ocean.

And the ocean continues to do this, come in and go out.

Once it was even 50 miles offshore.

That's something that's hard for most people to believe.

We'll talk about that a little more in a minute.

You can look straight down the beach and actually see some of that high ground left.

Do you see those palmettos sticking up?

And again, those will eventually probably be reclaimed by the ocean.

And the beach is always changing, that's why it's so much fun beach combing.

I mean, every time you come back, it's a little different than it was before.

<Wayne> Look at those.

What kind of birds are those?

<Rudy> Look at those pelicans.

These are one of the master fliers that you can see along our beaches.

One of the endangered species of animals that are found in South Carolina, the brown pelican.

Look how they glide right over the surface of the water.

Never seem to touch, but awfully close.

Right above the breakers feed mainly, of course, on fish and are pretty good divers.

It's hard for me to understand how they fly so well when you see them sitting down on the ground.

But once they get up in the sky, they're expert fliers and these need to be protected in South Carolina, and of course are.

I think it's pretty easy to see that these stumps here are remains of more Live Oaks, and they are littering this beach because the beach is just ocean has just come in and taken them away.

And you can see out there a little bit of the salt marsh left there and a lot of the shells that are up here love to live their lives in that salt marsh clay, Of course, some others are more used to the sandy areas.

Really beautiful material, well worked by the ocean.

Here's a piece over here.

Let's just take a look at while we're walking, because this is - Oh, yeah, look at this.

This is really a piece of the...of the reef.

Remember when I was telling you about off shore reefs?

Reefs are formed all the time in the oceans, and usually they're made up of pieces of shell material that are glued together with a natural cement.

In this instance, it's little crystals of calcium carbonate.

And if you can look carefully when the sunlight shines, these things actually sparkle.

If you get them in the right angle with the sunlight.

And you see, of course, that this is just shell material that's glued together.

<Wayne> More reef material here.

<Rudy>Yeah, this is really, I guess, a part of a reef Instead of being bits and pieces of shells, though, these are actually a group of worms that have built their tubes in a sense around and over one another.

And sometimes these can reach tremendous sizes.

And these offshore reefs are very, very important in giving us a good variety of fish offshore and also other living things.

<Wayne> That's neat.

<Rudy> This one is easy to see is a bivalve, right?

No question about the fact that it's a bivalve because you've got both of the valves.

This is one of the common clams.

And often you find, if you look carefully, a drill hole that looks like a drill hole was almost beginning but didn't quite get through.

This is called a dosinia clam.

D-o-s-i-n-i-a clam.

And of course, it's edible.

Like most of the clams, it is edible.

These clams feed on just filtering goodies out of the water, mainly algae and small things.

<Wayne> And yeah, we find the half shells all the time.

Why don't we ever find very many holes?

<Rudy> Well, let me clean this sand away, and you might be able to look and see that little shiny membrane that holds the two halves together.

It's very easily destroyed on a beach like this.

And so normally you just find a single half rather than both halves of the shell.

We got to look at that.

<Wayne> This one?

<Rudy> No, I think most people who would see this would...pass it up.

People often walking the beaches don't expect to find fossils.

And that's what this is.

This is a piece of bone.

If you look carefully on this side, you can actually see the marrow cavities that were once filled with red bone marrow.

This is the vertebra of a whale.

Let me turn it this way to show you a little bit better.

These are the two ends and this little groove on top is where the spinal cord once fit.

And again, this is 10 thousand to a million or so years old would be a good guess at it.

Very hard to get a good date on something that's loose on the beach.

But this is fossil material, no question about it.

I've got one thing I want to show you here that's kind of interesting.

We were talking a moment ago about the difference between right handed and left handed shells in these snails.

Here is a one of those knob whelks.

Remember that one we were talking about a moment ago.

Remember we were saying that this is towards the front of the body and so it's right handed.

Take a look at that shell.

Instead of being right handed, it's left handed and the left handed shells.

Snails like this that we find on our beaches are known as lightning whelks.

And so today we've really seen three different kinds of whelks, knobbed whelk, channeled whelk.

And now the left handed lightning whelk.

You'll notice it does have some very small knobs on it, but not nearly as distinctive as the knobbed whelk.

And of course, the giveaway difference.

One is right handed, the knobbed whelk.

Lightning whelk is left handed.

<Wayne> Okay.

We've seen small.

ones like this one and we've seen larger ones.

About how large can they get?

<Rudy> Well, let's just keep our eyes open and see what the biggest one is.

And when we've finished our walk, let's just see what the largest one is.

The largest one I've ever seen is probably about that long.

Again, they start off very, very small.

Their egg cases are sometimes washed up on the beach, but usually it's in the summer rather than this time of the year.

But let's just keep our eyes open and see.

One other thing I wanted to show you.

We talked about a fossil a minute ago.

It's very dark in color.

We notice that the bone marrow cavities are there.

Here's something else on the beach that's very dark in color and that many people would confuse with a fossil.

When you look at it carefully and especially hold it up to the sunlight, you'll notice that this is a piece of green glass bottle and there are quite a few old bottles found on beaches like this.

So when you're at the beach, you ought to expect the unexpected because you don't know what you're going to find.

There's so much variety here, but don't be confused by this piece of bottle.

It's just a piece of glass.

That's recent stuff.

This is, old.

10 thousand or so to a million years.

So there's quite a difference in time, and that's manmade.

This was produced by a whale.

Let's see what else we can find further down the beach.

I'm going to keep this lightning whelk with me.

Let's walk on and see what we can see.

So much material to take a look at ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ That's a piece of old brick from an old house.

Take a look right here.

There's a beautiful, beautiful knobbed whelk.

Look at this.

Look at it.

I think you can see pretty easily that the orange color of the inside lasts on the shells pretty well.

This one's been dead probably only for a fairly short period of time.

Those colors will eventually bleach out.

But notice how nature has always been a great recycler.

Using things over and over again.

This shell is a knobbed whelk but notice it all over.

It is a colonial animal known as a bryozoan or a moss animal.

Moss animal because it covers things kind of like moss covers rocks on the ground and fills in the spaces.

And then another animal on here that we've seen before are these barnacles.

Of course, most people think of barnacles as being very closely related to these animals with shells, but really the barnacles are more closely related to the insects than they are to these shelled animals.

So nature continues to recycle things on the beach.

One of the things that's kind of interesting is that we found a lot of things now as the tide's going out, you know, that's a good time to come to the beach and look.

But let's also check above the high tide line, because you never can tell what's going to wash over here during a big storm.

Some of the bigger shells are usually found in this kind of place.

Let's just walk toward the salt marsh, which is spectacular today.

Look at the colors out there.

Hold on.

Wait just a minute.

Let me show you something that really is tough about finding shells or fossils or whatever.

Look at this thing.

Here is a knobbed whelk that now has been buried only that much exposed and doesn't look too exciting.

Look at those markings though, when you pull it out.

And of course, there is the beautiful color.

I'm afraid most people in the woods or on the beaches never slow down enough to really see the exciting things.

And of course, we were on our way to the salt marsh.

Let's go ahead and just carry this one and see what we can see towards the salt marsh.

It's pretty, it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of beauty here.

But take a look at what's happening to the beach.

I think it's pretty easy to see you.

As we said before, the ocean is taking away a little bit of salt marsh all the time.

And you can look over there and actually see where the sand is just burying more of these grasses.

And eventually, when they get buried, they die.

And of course, this becomes wider beach.

The ocean takes away a little bit more of the land.

Let's just get a closer look.

As we're walking along here.

I think it's pretty obvious that the ocean's been here because, of course, we continue to see shell material.

It's covered with this sand.

This is really a neat bivalve, one of the larger ones, the giant Atlantic cockle shell.

And of course, we know the cockle shell from cockles and mussels song.

But look at the colors on that shell.

Kind of a purplish color on the inside.

Again, just half of one of the bivalves.

Very, very common in South Carolina.

I noticed, Yeah right here is another interesting variety again covered with sand.

We're going to do a little cleaning to get it nice and clean.

If you were to take one of these, this is a bivalve.

Now this is one half and put it here and make it bigger and have another one on the other side.

You might even take on the look of an angel.

And these are called angel wing shells.

They're very flimsy shells.

They don't really live in sandy beaches, but they do live in that salt marsh clay that we saw out there on the beach.

And of course, we see here that the beach is beginning to take some more of that salt marsh away.

Look at there.

I think it's obvious that we are not the only travelers on the beach.

These raccoon tracks here tell us, of course, that maybe last night the...raccoon was coming along, the salt marsh they feed on fiddler crabs and other things in the salt marsh area and get out on the beach sometimes also to feed on some of the ghost crabs there.

Footprints in the sands of time.

We leave ours.

And so did the raccoon.

Let's just leave a few more and walk over this way.

Look at the beautiful colors out there.

Phenomenal salt marsh area.

We'll have to talk a lot more about salt marshes at some time.

Look at the shells.

Look.

Look at this.

Look at this stuff.

Well you know, these shells are really signs of life.

The animal has died and this is just a little bit of it remaining as we look off into the salt marsh here, I think we can see a couple of other signs of life.

This can and the plastic bucket are signs that man also is a part of the beach in the salt marsh situation and has an effect on it.

And one of the things that is embarrassing to me as a human many times is that we really don't appreciate that relationship.

And a good example of it.

You remember the scotch bonnet that we saw a little while back?

That's the state shell of North Carolina.

And after it was named the state shell, people began to go and collect and collect and collect so heavily for sale usually that now Scotch bonnets in North Carolina are really much harder to find.

We need to realize we're, ...a part of this all.

And then if we mess this up, we're really sticking the knife right into ourselves.

That's something that you can see right out here on the edge of the salt marsh.

A little more that I want to show you down here.

Let's just see what else we can find.

Never seen so many shells in one place.

This is really a nice trip.

Wayne, time's running out.

Let me show you a few things here that I brought along.

I've left them by this log, and let's just sit down and maybe first, if we could just take a look at those shells that you brought along that we haven't had a chance to take a look at.

This one is another real common one on the beach known as a banded tulip shell.

This is kind of dirty, but if you look carefully, you can see those dark bands I think you see running across them.

Another one of the snails.

Here's another one of the snails, a lettered olive.

It looks as if somebody lettered on something.

And that's the name very common on our beaches.

This one is known as a slipper shell or a boat shell because it looks, it's the shape of a...slipper.

This one another snail is known as the baby's ear because it supposedly resembles the ear of a baby.

I suppose I could agree with that.

And these are called jingle shells, so named because when you shake them together you do get a jingling sound oftentimes.

The one that you found coming in here, you dug it out of the old salt marsh clay that's now under ocean is one of the mussels, one of the ribbed mussels.

It's an edible shell, a snail, but a clam rather, but when you open it up, you see that this animal is long since gone and has been filled in.

This was a part of the salt marsh.

It's now beach.

And of course we said the largest whelk, that's the largest knobbed whelk we got today, which is a pretty good sized one.

Let's see what I brought along since we saw the pelicans today.

This is what a pelican skull looks like.

This again, was found on Edisto Beach, long nose, and that little downturned tip is typical of the...pelican.

I brought along one or two fossils that I found at Edisto that I'm going to kind of prepare for the show next month.

This is an elephant tooth, which is not expected here at Edisto.

But elephants were once here when the ocean was a little further offshore, 10 thousand to a million years ago.

We had them right here in South Carolina.

And we know that because of fossils.

Horse tooth.

Let me just hand that one to you and keep getting this material out of the bag.

They were common here.

Bison tooth, also another one again, Edisto Beach.

The most common fossils at Edisto are the turtle shell fragments.

This is a piece of box turtle shell which you can still see the areas where the plates used to fit in.

And of course, the most exciting fossils to people on our beaches are the...shark teeth.

These are four of the most common shark teeth that are found on the beaches in South Carolina, starting at the top here, the tiger shark.

Again, their modern day relatives still living modern day shark teeth are white in color.

These, you see are pretty dark, which tell us they're fossils.

These two look very much alike.

This thicker one is known as the Mako shark.

Not really so common on our beaches.

The most common shark tooth probably found is the sand shark, which looks like the Mako shark, except it's a little skinnier and has two tiny teeth on the edge here and two little tiny cusps.

And last but not least, the white shark tooth.

I thought it might be good to talk about fossils for a minute because next month we go into the quarry and see what we can find fossil wise in some of the limestone quarries, so.

I'm looking forward to that.

<Wayne> So are we, Rudy.

Thanks for being with us this week.

<Rudy> My pleasure.

I've enjoyed it.

<Wayne> Looking forward to next month.

Okay.

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