Taryn The Shell

07/09/2026

06/09/2026

🃏 Week 36 of 2026 from the Broome Shells deck is...
Pearl shell in the Bivalves suit ♠

Shinju Matsuri, Festival of the Pearl wraps up this weekend. It's also Father's Day. What better way to celebrate both of these than with the King of bivalves, the pearl shell! Pearls, and pearl shell have been harvested from the waters around Broome commercially for about 150 years, and this town was built around the industry. It's important to acknowledge that Indigenous people have been using the shell and meat sustainably for many thousands of years. The specimen photographed is a juvenile or baby shell, and you can only see only 1 half of the bi (2) valves or shells that are joined by an elastic hinge. The inside of pearl shells are called mother of pearl because they can grow a pearl. Also called nacre, the irredescent glossy surface inside the shell, and of the pearl, is made of the same calcium carbonate material as the outside of the shell, only the cells are arranged differently. Why do shells create such beauty? Arranged in this way, the calcium carbonate is much stronger, so it's a defence against instrusions by invasive predators such as worms that can drill through the shell. There are many pearl (shell) experts around town and I'm not one of them so if you ever visit Broome I can recommend going on any of the pearl farm tours offered, they're educational and enjoyable!

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03/09/2026

Plenty of live shells to see with the Broome Community Seagrass Monitoring Project 🐚🌱

02/09/2026

The Shell 🐚 Books 📚

📖 The Shell
✒️ Stix & Abbott
🏷 Non-Fiction 1979?
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The preface story is interesting, and I love the long introduction covering lots of the history between humans and shells. I had a less enjoyable experience when I got to the plates, which are coloured photographs of specimens. The descriptions were often pages away so I had to flip back and forth. The shells selected are spectacular however I don't like the photography style or the modelling positions. Overall I don't think the book addresses the subtitle '500 million years of inspired design'.

3 / 5 shells in my rating 🤓

30/08/2026

🃏 Week 35 of 2026 from the Broome Shells deck is...
Purple Banded Dolphin shell in the Gastropods suit ♦

I use common names because they make sense on the beach and are easier to remember. A few of them require some imagination... can you see the dolphin? The curved, stubby-spine silhoettes around the outside of the shell look like a dolphin's curved back and dorsal fin coming out of the water while it swims along (this behaviour is called sharking). This particular species has dark purple bands growing around the spiral. It's a very thick, heavy, strong shell with a round aperture and operculum. The seasnail needs this protection while they graze algae off rocks and reef, helping to maintain balance in the ecosystem. After the mollusc dies, the empty shell makes a great home for hermit crabs, both in the water (aquatic) and in the sand dunes (terrestrial).

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22/08/2026

🃏 Week 34 of 2026 from the Broome Shells deck is...
Bonnet shell in the Gastropods suit ♣

Bonnets, like their cousins the helmet shells, are named because they resemble that type of headwear. A thick and sturdy seasnail, they cruise around the sandy ocean floor hunting echinoderms like sea urchins and sand dollars. Using their radula, like a modified toothy tongue, they drill through the urchin's test, inject an acidic saliva, then suck the food up like a straw. In the photo, the apex (pointy part of the spiral) is at the top. The tiny tip is the protoconch (first-shell) and the oldest part of the shell, formed when the mollusc was a few weeks old. As the animal grew, it added calcium carbonate to enlarge the shell around it. When the bonnet approaches reproductive maturity age, the animal adds more calcium carbonate to the base and outer lip of the shell so it becomes more stable for mating, and in the females, for laying eggs. In the photo at the bottom of the shell is the opening called siphonal canal. It's a channel in the hard shell that protects the soft siphon part of the animal to protrude safely for sniffering, or up into the water while submerged under the sand. While this specimen has been bleached white by the sun, the living shell has brown markings on it, sometimes in a soft square checkerboard pattern.

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21/08/2026

The Shell 🐚 Books 📚

📖 Pearls and Pearling Life
✒️ Edwin W. Streeter
🏷 Non-Fiction 1886
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As you'd expect with a book written 150 years ago, the language (some of the words) are ye olde style. There's also passages of foreign language without translation. Some of the phrases and characterisations of pearl shelling are fun. Interesting from a local perspective, when the pearling industry was run out of Cossack, Broome was not yet on the map (literally). This account is world-wide and very comprehensive for its time. Did you know some individual pearl specimens have names? There's a list of these famous pearls traced through history (ie. who owned them) and I wonder where they are now. The colour plates of pearls in different types of shells are attractive and good examples of that era's style.

3 / 5 shells in my rating 🤓