The Bailey-Mathews National Shell Museum: Alpha Chis See Sea Shells by the Sea Shore

The Shell Museum is located on Sanibel Island on the Gulf of Mexico coast of Southwest Florida. The museum opened to the public in 1995 and operates as an information and reference center for scientists, students, and shell enthusiasts, particularly those who are interested in the mollusks of the Gulf of Mexico and Florida..

  Sanibel Island is one of the best seashell collecting spots in the world. The museum also owns a collection of Pacific Ocean cowries and cones donated by actor Raymond Burr, who owned an island in the Fijis, and who led the efforts to raise funds to build the museum.

The Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum began in 1990 with a gift of land from the Bailey brothers, John, Francis, and Sam, in memory of their parents, Frank P. Bailey and Annie Mead Matthews.

 

Outside the museum is a memorial garden dedicated to Raymond Burr. Inside the museum is a small exhibit about him as a film actor, philanthropist and shell collector.

 

A view of the museum building with the new shell banners in place

Sue on the steps leading up to the entrance of the museum

Nancy on her way up to the museum

 

Jean, Sally and Linda in the gift shop/registration area 

 

Phyllis and Sandy looking over items in the gift shop

 

 

In the Great Hall of Shells, the centerpiece is a rotating 6’ diameter globe surrounded by shells from selected geographic regions.

 

 

Tiffany is beside an exhibit of worldwide record-sized shells.

 

 

A display of the largest known representatives on record of several very large species of mollusks.

 

 

 Opeatostoma Pseudodon

This species, a predatory sea snail, is found in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean. This world record-sized shell was collected in Isla Solanga, Ecuador.

 

 

A display of cephalopods (marine animals with tentacles), including models of a nautilus, a giant squid, and an octopus, the three main surviving branches of cephalopods

 

 

Inside the Children’s Learning Lab are hands-on displays, games and a live mollusk tank.

 

 

MMM…Mollusks! Cuisines featuring edible mollusks from 5 continents. You can email your favorite recipe to yourself or friends.

 

 

 
Life-sized models of a Calusa Native American father showing his son how to use the shells of the locally-occurring large whelks to create tools.

Jackie looking at a shell flower arrangement

 

 

 

Shellabration--2012 by Goz Gosselin

 This large free-standing shell flower arrangement measures three feet tall by two and one-half feet wide. It is made of all natural colored shells.

Treasures of a Sailor’s Widow

“Many a sailor’s wife or sweetheart waited patiently for months in her New England cottage for the return of her beloved from a long voyage to the South Atlantic and the Caribbean. Her reminders were the treasures he would carry back with him from far-away ports such as this Sailor’s Valentine and seashell collection. Although she would most likely have stored her collection in boxes or displayed them on shelves, here she has decorated a large shadow box, in the tradition of Sailors’ Valentines, and turned it into a folding table.”

 

 

Shadow box/folding table

 

 

No, a Sailor’s Valentine was not made by a sailor to pass the time at sea. Making Sailors’ Valentines was a highly prized art form developed in the early 19^th century by women in Barbados and other areas of the Caribbean and often bought by sailors for their loved ones.

 

 

The craftsmen would often include romantic sayings, such as “Forget-me-not” or “Remember me.”

 

When Caribbean and other stop-over ports for New England whalers ceased to be ports-of-call for the whaling ships, this shell art also disappeared by the 20^th century. Recently, this craft has undergone a revival.

 

The “money cowrie” is a species of small sea snail. The shells were historically widely used in many Pacific and Indian Ocean countries as shell money before coinage was in common usage. As such, it was the most widely circulated and longest-enduring currency in history. This pillar holds “a fortune” in money cowries.

Rosemary and Phyllis

 Sue and Kerry

 

 

A stick chart was an ancient navigation method used by early seafarers to help them locate different islands and sea routes. “These maps consist of small sticks tied together in straight or curved lines, intended to represent the currents or waves to be met, while the islands are to be found at certain points where these lines meet.” (a description from an 1862 Nautical Magazine.)

 

 

Cowrie-shell-eyes of this tribal statue

“Shells in tribal cultures have been used since the dawn of civilization as tools, ornaments and weapons. To early peoples, shells symbolized sex and life eternal. The burial graves of cro-Magnon Man in Europe contained shells from the Red Sea. Ancient Egyptians placed cowrie shells over the eyes of their mummies for sight in the hereafter.”

 

Rebecca Mersch, M.Sc., Marine Biologist
 

Our presenter is the kind of person who is so well-informed and passionate about her field that you can’t help but become interested in cephalopods and gastropods and the way they live. (Many gastropods are herbivores, but as Rebecca told us, there are also a few predatory carnivorous gastropods, which makes me look at snails in a whole different light.)

 

Rebecca’s attentive class

 

Rebecca is standing by a tank full of marine animals.

 

Donna admiring a sea snail in the tank

Donna and Rosemary taking a closer look at the marine animals in the tank

 

Nancy, Scottie and Darlene are looking at “Shelling this Week,” a community shelling map to find local beaches and parking and to share shell finds.

 

The restaurant at the Sundial Resort

 

Donna, Ann and Jean in front of the restaurant

 

Pat, Rosemary and Jackie on their way into the restaurant

 

 

The view of the Gulf of Mexico from the restaurant

 

 

 

The first table of Alpha Chis

 

 

The second table of Alpha Chis

 

 

The third table of Alpha Chis and Guest, Debbie, daughter of Bobbi Hanson.

 

 

Birthday girl Betsy, Bobbi's sister and Debbie's aunt

FYI: Official Notification from Alpha Chi Omega National Headquarters

Alpha Chi Omega is Florida Gulf Coast University-bound in fall 2015! We are so grateful to FGCU Panhellenic Council for the invitation to colonize on campus, and we are eager to meet the real, strong women of FGCU! #AXO