HCA: Hermit Crab Association

I went to the beach this weekend and brought a great read called "Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells."


It focuses on how sells are made and why they are the way they are. It is beautifully written and in such a way that someone without a science background can understand it.

Fun fact, the opening of a shell is called an aperture. Who knew?

While I was at the beach I began to dig and I found this lovely conch sell. I read in the book that almost all shells swirl to the right. I had never noticed this before!

It's beautiful!!!


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Very cool!!

Thanks! I am far too excited about it. I just dug it up. I had no idea you could find full conch shells on the beach. One day I hope my guys grow into jumbos and maybe one will move into it.

The book looks awesome, I'll have to check it out.

I hate to be like, that person that rains on your parade, because the conch shell is lovely and huge and super cool. I have one that was my grandmother's.

Please leave shells on the beach. Don't remove shells from the wild at all. In many places beach combing is illegal, and removing any items affects the shore erosion. I'm actually working with a member of another group who is an MPA monitor in California as part of her job in the NAVY, and in many places, you cannot return shells once they have been removed because of the potential to introduce unknown or unwanted disease vectors into the environment.

I know people think "Oh I'm just taking a couple of shells, what harm can it do?" Multiply that by the thousands of tourists who go to beaches every day and take shells home as keepsakes. There is a shortage of shells in the wild for hermits due to harvesting for crafts/tourist industry.

I am not jumping your case for taking the shell, I just want anyone who reads this post to understand why it's not a good idea to rush right out to the beach and start hauling shells home.

Oh and also! I have to find homes for all the marine hermits that people accidentally bring home with them in shells from the beach and it's frustrating because they need an even more costly setup than land hermits do!

I think you will love the book! As I said, it is written in such a way that you can understand it but at the same time she does not make you feel like she is talking to a five year old.

Do you have some good suggestions for finding eco-friendly shells? I took this one and one snail shell for Kaiser Karl. I have had no good luck finding larger shells.

I just ordered the book on Amazon will be here tomorrow. Thank you for the recommendation.

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Oh great! You will have to tell me what you think!

Sure will

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I don't think there are any eco friendly shells unfortunately. They're all harvested from the snail species that created them. But for larger shells I have had success with Mygann on Etsy/Ebay/Amazon.

Well I tried to find some 3-d printed shells with no luck. I need to make friends with someone who has a printer.

I wouldn't use 3D printed shells unless there was a way to print them out with calcium carbonate.

They pick at their shells to modify them to fit their bodies, and to eat bits for calcium. So any material that isn't safe for crab consumption (and what may be safe for consumption might not necessarily be nutritious) really isn't ideal for shells.

It's a frustrating dilemma. I read recently that a company made shells for crabs out of a potato starch based compound, but they were all green and had a company logo printed on the side... so I am not sure how awesome they are, but at least someone is trying to find a solution.

Do you know the name of the company?

I saw a video about it the other day. The company is suumo.


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