When I think about all of His wonders in the deep, seashells are always at the top of my list. As a young boy my parents took us on almost a yearly basis to Scripps Institute in San Diego. One year we purchased a small collection of shells that were displayed in a cardboard box. The shells came from the California coast area. They were neat to a young boy and I took them to school and wrote a report about shells and used them as a display to go along with my report. I got an A on the report and felt good about my accomplishment. It wasn't till years later, while scuba diving in Guam that I realized just how dull and boring those California coast seashells really were. Of course, as a kid, I didn't know any better.
Over the six years that we lived in Guam, we collected many shells. It became almost a weekly obsession for my family. My wife and I had a particular dive site that we really enjoyed for finding seashells called Coral Gardens. It is near a small island called Anai near the village of Agat. We would take a skiff out to the island that was about a quarter of a mile off of the coast. There was a mooring that we would tie the skiff off to and then we would comb the bottom looking for shells. Of course, we would only collect empty shells.
Beautiful tropical shells are like bananas in Indonesia. Did you know that Indonesia has 60 different types of bananas. In the states a banana is a banana, right? Anyway, go to the library and check out a seashell book and feast your eyes on some shells that are so ornamental that they look hand made. A good shell reference book is: A Collector's Guide to Seashells of the World, by Jerome M. Eisenberg.
When I think about my favorite seashell, I think about a scripture in The Pearl of Great Price.
Moses 6:63 says:
And behold, all things have their likeness,
and all things are created and made to bear record of me,
both things which are temporal,
and things which are spiritual;
things which are in the heavens above,
and things which are on the earth,
and things which are in the earth,
and things which are under the earth,
both above and beneath:
All Things Bear Record Of Me.
I can never look upon Turbo Petholatus (Cat's Eye Turban) without thinking of the Creator. The Savior loved the sea side. ( St Mark 4:1) He loves his creations. I am mystified and awed every time I look at the intricate beauty of the Cat's Eye Turban. Can you imagine the excitement of diving along a sandy bottom and coming upon a Cat's Eye Turban? Can you imagine the Saviors excitement at creating such a thing of beauty?
By the way, the reason it is called a Cat's Eye Turban is because the operculum looks like a cat's eye.
What is an operculum, you say? It is a horny or calcareous plate attached to the foot of some gastropods, which seals the aperture of the shell when the animal is withdrawn.
This photo shows the front and back of a Cat's Eye Turban operculum. The green eye side faced out when the animal withdrew into the shell. The brown side was what the animal was connected to.
