Another example of time just slipping away, because I remember the trip where I obtained this image, and would not have said that it was eight years ago (tomorrow, actually.) Then again, my beach trips have been scarce recently, ‘recently’ meaning, ‘in the past several years,’ so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
Off the ocean side of the middle of Jekyll Island, Georgia, the calm beaches there played host to countless sand dollars (order Clypeasteroida,) able to be found by gently running your fingers just below the surface of the sand just offshore in shallow water, and we found plenty of them, of all sizes. I collected one in the macro aquarium that I’d thought to bring with me, and did a photo session in the bathroom of the motel late at night while everyone else was asleep. Unfortunately, the water hadn’t had the several hours needed to let the turbidity fully settle out, so the specimen goes softer with the greater amount of water between my camera and itself. It was still enough to see the tiny little ‘feet’ that it uses to bury itself in the sand, or alternately to stand upright (on edge) in the currents while feeding. These feet could also be felt moving gently within your hand if you held onto one for more than a minute or so.
What I find amusing is that, as familiar as we all are with the off-white skeletal remains of sand dollars, their appearance while living is what a child might imagine, based on the skeleton – just put a thin layer of flesh over it all and that’s what it looks like, right? And in this case, it is. Except perhaps for the color, which even I find a little odd – I definitely expected ‘sand,’ followed by brownish or something. Not olive.
I think we had two other trips to Jekyll planned since this was taken; one got canceled because of a hurricane, and the other we cut short after only a day because of another hurricane, only this one was aimed directly at our home in NC rather than at Jekyll, but we thought it would be better to be back there in case power got knocked out or the petsitter couldn’t get by. We did decide not to plan such trips for hurricane season from then on, though.