Mollusks are on the move! They recently headed to the Shell Point Retirement Community, as pictured above, from the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum.
Two 10-gallon tanks and six five-gallon buckets of salt water and live mollusks were loaded in the back of a pick-up truck, which then traveled off-island for the museum’s first-ever Mobile Mollusk Outreach program.
More than 60 Shell Point residents packed the social center to take part in the presentation. Marine biologist Rebecca Mensch gave a 30-minute demonstration about live mollusks, covering a range of topics including how mollusks begin life, how they grow, how they get their color, how long they live, how they reproduce, and what environmental threats are most concerning.
Mobile Mollusk Outreach is an extension of the museum’s Live Tank Talks. This program has been the most popular and most effective public programming at the museum, which is why it was time to take it on the road.
Taking mollusks to our neighbors in Lee County will be a giant step forward for the shell museum and its mission: to connect as many people as possible to the natural world through shells and the amazing animals that create them. For more information, visit shellmuseum.org.
