Cone Shells -- Beautiful Beachside Danger

Don't let its size or the fact that it resembles a "snail" fool you--a cone shell has the stealth, speed, and deadliness of a stealth fighter! 

It's always a thrill to find a beautiful shell when you are walking along the beach or snorkeling or SCUBA diving. Believe me--I've had the experience of finding beautiful shells either on the beach or in the warm waters of a coral reef.

But how you handle that shell if you decide to pick it up could be the difference between life and death--namely, yours.  Your death, that is.

When most folks think about molluscs--snails, if you wish--they think of slow-moving docile critters that may be tasty as the French "escargot" or the tasty abalone. 

But one family of shells has the stealth, speed, and deadliness of a stealth fighter--the cone shells.  Not all cone shells are deadly--but they all are capable of zapping with a venom-laden harpoon.

Some of the videos included below illustrate the stealth, the speed, and the deadliness of these animals.

I remember a story from when I lived on Guam.... where folks found a sailor dead on a Guam beach one morning. At first, foul play was suspected--the sailor had been on shore-leave from a visiting Navy ship.

However, after medical examiners started their "Crime Scene Investigation"--and had removed the sailor's clothes to perform an autopsy to figure out the cause of death--they found a surprising twist. A small shell dropped out of the sailor's shirt pocket.  The shell was a dead cone shell.  Evidently, the sailor had been stung by the animal before the animal died.

The shell has caused the demise of many amateur collectors--and even expert shell collectors who let their guard down and got careless.

Pacific Islanders treat the animals with great respect. They pick up the shells only by the broad end and never carry the live animals in anything less than metal or glass or wood containers.

When we lived on Guam, we heard stories of islanders who had been hauling in a fishing net and who got stung by a cone shell that had been on the net. We heard that the islander would immediately pull out a machete and lop off the stung appendage. To the islanders, going without a hand or arm was better than dying of paralysis?