Good gravy I hope that tail fin was larger when it was alive...

Here is the dead pufferfish I was telling you about! It's actually called a spiny boxfish. It's about 6 inches long. It was quite stinky, and I nicked myself with a spine. :(

Fish backbone piece

Here is a tiny fish vertebrae. It was about a centimeter long. Fish bones are not that common on South Beach, where I went, but are quite plentiful on the beach near Harbor Town. There are many large bones there, and I'm assuming that's because people go and fish, then come back and clean their fish on the docks, and throw the carcasses over the railing. The carcasses are eaten by crabs, and the skeletons wash up on the beach. At least that's how I see it. :)

Limpet.

Here is a limpet shell. Have you ever heard the phrase, "cling like a limpet"? That's what limpets do. They cling onto other shells for transportation and shelter. Notice how this one is curved. It probably lived in some whelk or moon snail shell as a very small limpet, and grew larger and larger, and curved as the shell was curved, to accommodate its tight lodging. And yes, my fingernails need trimming.

Misc. II

Here are some miscellaneous shells and a fuzzy caterpillar. The only one I could recognize is the one second to the bottom. That one is a broken Olive shell, (South Carolina's state shell), with a little star coral attached.

Some broken shell

I had a hard time identifying this. It's either a Knobbed Whelk or some kind of conch. Probably a knobbed whelk. By the way, there is a way to help identify these things. There are two main kinds of whelks around here, knobbed whelks, and lightning whelks. If you turn some unknown whelk on its "back", then you will see the opening is on a particular side. Knobbed Whelks have the opening on the right side, while Lighting Whelks have it on the left. See how that eliminates Lightning Whelks as a candidate for this shells' identification? Hope that makes that clear. As I've said, I'm bad at condensing. Just type in knobbed or lightning whelk in the google image search engine, and you'll see what I mean. :)

P.s. I pronounce it conch, like a Northerner. Not conk. (It can be pronounced either way.)

Misc.

Here's some miscellanous feather from some seabird I found.

Star Coral

This is, (in case the title didn't give you a hint), star coral. It is also known as Astrangia, and personally, it's one of my favorite things to find on the beach. It's Hilton Head's only stony coral, (stony as in not brittle or soft, and rocklike instead.) There are very often chunks of it scattered along the beach, and I've never found any alive with polyps. (Polyps are the little creatures that live in those pretty cavities.) If you decorate your house with shells and other ocean things, star coral looks very attractive in a small bowl or other piece of glassware.

Spider crabs

And here we have Spider Crabs! They're about 1-2 inches long, but some can grow up to 3 inches, mabye a bit longer. These crabs are unique because they grow gardens on their backs! On all these photos, you see stringy brown stuff, a little goop, and sand. (The sand wasn't supposed to be there.) These crabs collect ooze, bacteria, and plankton on their rough, spiny shells. The gooey mess attracts other plants and animals. Some of these are seaweed, sponge, tube worms, hydroids, and bryzoans. Interesting! The crabs will even snip off plants from the ocean floor, put them to their mouth, coating the organism with gluey mucus, and sticks it to their backs! 8) Wierd...