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For several years, we participated in the St. Petersburg Shell Show, which is still one of the best shell shows in Florida. We usually traveled there with our families, rented an apartment, and stayed for a few extra days, combining the shell show with some time at the beach, relaxing and enjoying the company of friends.
During some of those trips, we had the opportunity to go collecting with our good friend Bob Lipe, from whom we learned many useful collecting techniques. One of them was a very simple but effective method of screening sand to find small and microscopic shells that would otherwise be almost impossible to notice.
Bob had made a special scoop and three floating wooden trays, each fitted with a different size of stainless-steel mesh. The scoop had a long handle, allowing him to walk into the water up to chest depth, collect sand from the bottom, and bring it back to the trays for screening.
Because the trays were made of wood, they floated and could be attached to him with a line, making the entire process practical for one person. The tray with the largest mesh was placed on top and retained larger shells, rocks, coral fragments, and other debris. The second tray caught smaller shells, while the finest mesh at the bottom retained tiny shells and microshells that could easily be overlooked with other collecting methods.
I thought the idea was excellent and wanted to use the same method on our collecting trips. However, wood and metal are quite heavy, especially when you have to carry everything in your luggage to distant parts of the world. So I decided to make my own lighter version.
I built the scoop from PVC pipe and used plastic trays fitted with plastic mesh instead of stainless steel. I also made the long handle collapsible into three sections, joined together with screws, so the whole apparatus could be disassembled and packed inside a suitcase.
We took this homemade equipment with us on several collecting trips, including Ecuador, Samoa, Mexico, and other places. Of course, the method only works when you find the right kind of habitat, and there is never any guarantee that a particular spot will produce shells. Sometimes you screen a great deal of sand and find very little.
But when you do find the right place, the results can be fascinating. The tiny shells recovered by screening are often species that would be extremely difficult—or even impossible—to collect in any other way. It is one of those simple collecting techniques that can reveal an entire miniature world hidden beneath the sand.
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