Yesterday afternoon, we expected that we would have to resort to hallwalking for our exercise again. But by 2:00 p.m. the forecasted rain had stopped and a feeble sun was attempting to push through the clouds. I checked the weather radar and it looked like we had a small window between the green and yellow streaks of rain rushing past us from the southwest. Beachwalking is always preferable to hallwalking!
The J. S. Chatry, which readers of this blog will know is the cutterhead pipeline dredge that has been hard at work (day and night) dredging and nourishing the beach, was nowhere to be seen on the horizon. I later learned from the website that it was moored in the Harbor since Sunday because of rough sea conditions and mechanical issues. Thus far, 700,000 cubic yards have been dredged and placed along about a mile-and-a-half of the beach, extending well past the condo building. We climbed over one of the sand bridges the contractors had created over the pipeline.
We headed west, toward Oceanana Pier; we did not see any work going on, and when we climbed over the pipeline it was silent. We had only gone a quarter of a mile or so when one of the big vehicles parked with a cluster of other equipment began beeping its horn insistently. We had not seen anyone working and thought they had been unoccupied.
“Is that somebody honking a horn at us?” I asked Martha. We had our answer when a big yellow vehicle - not one of the little bulldozers that pushes the silt around, but a forklift used to pull and push the pipes into place – suddenly detached itself and came toward us, clambering over a sand bridge. An irate man leaned out the window and said, “You got to go the other way! That way is closed off!” It did not look closed to us, but we did not argue with man or machine, and started off in the other direction.
The beach was wide and flat and there were thick clusters of shells everywhere, including a lot of whelks.
I picked up two interesting shells, but Martha lingered behind, filling a bag with many, many shells that I had apparently overlooked in my zeal to walk as fast as I could before the rain returned. We returned to the condo, and I could see that Martha had quite a haul in her little ziplok plastic bag. But I did not realize until later that she had amassed an absolutely amazing collection of shells, which she arranged on a wooden tray as one might see in a museum display. The counter between the kitchen and the entry foyer is already nearly covered with shells, but this new collection is twice as many.
Those three rows on the left and two on the right are called olives. The two white ones side-by-size (lower right) are short razor clams. The big round multi-colored whorl (slightly right of center) is a rare shark eye. There were several whelks and scallops, and to top off everything she found a perfect sand dollar (below and to the left of the shark eye), not much larger than a quarter. Martha posted this photo on the Friends of Atlantic Beach Facebook Group page, and as of this post it has attracted 454 “likes.” Everybody wanted to know where she found them all, so today we expected to see dozens of shell-seekers out there on the beach, hoping to find for themselves this plentiful treasure, washed up on the tide, shyly waiting to be discovered.
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