The Sanibel-Captiva Shell Club was formed to exchange information in the field of conchology and malacology, to foster public education and intelligent conservation, and to encourage and support studies and research activities in those fields.
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2022/2023 Meetings and Lecturers
April 16, 2023, Monthly Club Meeting
Paul Jones is our guest lecturer for April. Paul is an expert on bivalves, and he has decided to give his talk on one of our favorite bivalves—the lion’s paw! The title of his presentation is “Nodipecten fragosus (Conrad, 1849), the Northern Lion’s Paw Scallop shell.” One of the most prized and beautiful scallop shells in the world is found right off both sides of the Florida coast. Paul will discuss many aspects of this marvelous shell and tell us a little bit about the amazing mollusk that makes it!
Paul is pretty much a lifetime specimen shell collector, having been born and raised in St. Augustine, Florida. He has collected extensively all around Florida for decades and also places like Southern California, Baja California and Europe on the island of Sicily. He is currently retired from 32 years of service in the U. S. government and a member of the Jacksonville Shell Club. He specializes in the scallop, cone, volute and murex families.
March 19, 2023, Monthly Club Meeting
In March, Dr. Geiger will give a very brief overview of the molluscan studies at the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute including a discussion of Florida’s oysters, clams, scallops and marine snails. He will also explain why a gastropod project was started and what it has revealed. Are horse conch numbers on the decline? How are the bay scallops faring? Which Florida gastropods are endangered? You’ll learn about all of this and more at our next meeting!
Dr. Steve Geiger is a Research Scientist in the Marine Shellfish Biology section of Florida Wildlife Research Institute’s Marine Fisheries Research division (Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission) based in St. Petersburg, FL. He has worked on Molluscan Fisheries since 2001 and has been a Research Scientist since 2009 with a focus on monitoring and restoration of bay scallops, restoration and monitoring of oysters, monitoring of oysters as an indicator for Everglades Restoration, and development of a program to monitor biodiversity in gastropods. He is also called upon to study other molluscan issues as needed. In addition, Dr. Geiger is a shell-collector, former editor and contributor for the newsletter Suncoast Shorelines, and current vice president of the Suncoast Conchologists.
February 12, 2023, Monthly Club Meeting
Our guest lecturer for February will be Stefanie Plein. Her lecture will focus on a brief background of bottlenose dolphin biology and ecology and former research done in the area. She will describe why she and her husband Stephen started this citizen science project, what their photo-identification methods are, and what they have learned thus far.
Stefanie draws from extensive education and research in the marine biology field. She earned a Master of Science degree in Biology from Western Illinois University while studying the home range use patterns of resident bottlenose dolphin in the Adriatic Sea. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology, Evolution, and Animal Behavior from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Stefanie has contributed to the photo ID of manatees with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission and the photo ID of bottlenose dolphins with the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies and has volunteered for 6 seasons with SCCF’s sea turtle nesting program. She is an active volunteer with the marine mammal stranding response team in Southwest Florida and has taught eight semesters of marine biology to undergraduates at Florida Gulf Coast University.
She currently co-owns and operates New Wave Eco Charters and is the co-founder/executive director of New Wave Marine Foundation. The mission of the New Wave Marine Foundation is to conduct citizen science research to catalog and monitor the bottlenose dolphin population near Sanibel and Captiva Islands and to create awareness and inspire protection through education.
January 8, 2023 Meeting
Our guest speaker was Gene Everson presenting. “Shelling in Djibouti.” It’s a small country in northeast Africa between Somalia to the south and the southern entrance to the Red Sea to the north. It has only 195 miles of coastline. It sits on the Gulf of Aden in the northwest Indian Ocean with the narrow Gulf of Tanjoura bisecting the country, so the land was is in the shape of the letter “C.” We arrived in Djibouti on March 6, 2021, and left on April 3. My shelling partner was Silvard Kool, world famous pianist who opened the COA on Captiva with a piano concert.
Since Gene is a frequent exhibitor at shell shows, many of you may know him already. In case you don’t, we asked Gene to tell us a bit about himself, and here is his story. ” I started shell collected in 1966 while based in Guam for six months flying mission to Vietnam. I found out about shell clubs in 1972 and joined the Broward Shell Club and was a three-time President of the club. I have a BA in Biology from the University of Louisville, KY and flew for 23 years commercially. There is a Phyllonotus and Trophon (Muricidae) named for me, plus a Cone. My main interest in shells is exhibiting, having won 48 COA Awards, plus the first two Sanibel Superstar trophies and the first two Sanibel Platinum Awards.”
November 13, 2022 Speaker
Hope you were able to be present at our November 13, 2022, Zoom Club Meeting.
Sam Ankerson, Executive Director of the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum led off our meeting with a heartbreaking, but an informative and encouraging update status of the museum.
Our feature speaker was Dr. José H. Leal. The title of his lecture was “My Natural History Travelogue”, although he modified it to include his set of educated guesses and predictions based upon past events and what we know about hurricanes and mollusks.
Dr. José H. Leal was Director of the Shell Museum between February 1996 and August 2013 and is now its Science Director and Curator. His love for shells and sea life goes back to his childhood years in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His wonderful presentation about his life travels and expeditions was a fascinating account of his passion to search and study mollusks in different parts of the world.
Dr. Leal described how many marine vertebrates (like sharks and fish) were able to leave the area of the hurricane’s wrath, while slow moving animals (like manatees and mollusks) were left to fight the furry of the storm. Many filter-feeding bivalves live in different depths in substrates and are most certainly affected by clouded water and settling storm sands. In summary of this part of the presentation, Dr. Leal stressed, “Recovery will happen, but it may take a few years for that, and hopefully the diversity may return to its pre-storm levels, eventually with different species replacing some of the ones found pre-hurricane.”
Dr. Leal referenced his book “Marine Prosobranch Gastropods from Oceanic Islands off Brazil: Species Composition and Biogeography” and provided the link to download it. It is a wonderful study on the species found at four oceanic islands and six seamounts off Brazil.
