N 26°28’51.77″ W 82°10’54.85″ Google Earth Location
The precision of this one is up for grabs, but also not really necessary. The beaches of Sanibel Island are particularly known as some of the best ‘shelling’ beaches of the US, likely because of the particular geography of the island as well as the biology/ecology off the coast there. But exact locations likely shift a bit, and most certainly have since this was taken in 2009. The pile itself, which The Girlfriend and I sifted through for a short while, was a few meters wide and eight to ten long, give or take – I didn’t make any measurements while there, so I’m going on memory. It’s the only place that we’ve found sea urchin shells, as well as a collection of their needles. I needed a nice low-angle frame and sought out that particular red-and-white shell in the foreground as a point of focus. If you want to see what happened only a moment later, go here and hover over the image – does that works on smutphones? I just checked: apparently it does if you touch the image, and realize that this is me bending over backwards because I consider smutphones a goddamned stupid way of web surfing…
As I type this, I’m curious how much, or little, Hurricane Ian changed things last year. Sanibel and Fort Myers (the nearest mainland city) were slammed pretty hard, and there may have been some changes to the offshore conditions that contributed. I’ll be happy to check it out and report my findings – backed with a few funding contributions, naturally, but you know it’s a sound investment.