Sand Dollar Treasure

 

Sand Dollar Seeker

I have always been a shell-seeking and shark tooth-seeking tourist when at the ocean.  I have small boxes of shark teeth that my family and I found during our vacation times.  I have spent hours on the shoreline examining the sand as the tide uncovered the tiny little black jewels or a beautiful seashell.  The shark teeth are very tiny but have a certain luster to them that make them identifiable, but it takes a keen eye.  The last few years I haven’t been very successful at all finding any of them.  This year, I went to Kiawah Island in SC with my son and his family.  At Kiawah, the water from the river meets the ocean to produce rather unique brackish tide pool formations.  To get to the ocean, one had to wade through a sometimes waist high tide pool.  At low tide the tide pools would be only about knee deep or less, which was ideal for my two-year old granddaughter to play in.  It was at this beach, however, that I discovered a new treasure to seek along the shore.  I found sand dollars!  They were plentiful, but not so much that it wasn’t a quest to find them.  Many of them were broken, as they are brittle and delicate.  Flat and sometimes partly covered in sand, they were a real joy to find.  These were 2–3-inch medallions with beautifully star-shaped adornment and five slits magnificently spaced.  These were not alive.  It is illegal to take live sand dollars from the beach.  In the course of a week, I found about 40 sand dollars, cleaned them and brought them home with me.  Seashells, shark teeth and now sand dollars are on my list of shore-seeking treasures!

Tammy Harvey  7/21/2025