Down In The Mud

Last weekend when I went flower shooting, it happened to be at low tide, and Selby Gardens is right on Sarasota Bay. I spotted these two horse conchs in the mud on an exposed piece of bottom and thought they were pretty impressive. Hard to tell the scale in this shot, but each of those spiral shells is nearly a foot from point to end. It's pretty rare to find these guys this big, and even rarer to find them empty so you can take them home, but it does happen. These two were alive and well, if a bit high and dry until the tide came back in. I'm not sure, but I suspect maybe they were together for a little bit of mating, but it could just be a coincidence that they were in such close proximity.