Sand Dollar Among Sea Foam

~Taken on our Nature Walk on Dec. 29, 2005~

Grandma and Grandpa are visiting, so we went to the beach this afternoon.  (A five-minute ride from our house.)  It was perfect -- no crowd( except for a few locals & Christmas vistors), sunny, jacket weather, with enough wind to not be chilly, but enough to whip up some sea foam from the waves.  Today we found 2 wonderful (and rare) finds.

#1.  Sand Dollars.  Usually these break-up before landing on the beach, but today we were blessed to find 2 - one large and one small.  So G&G will get to take one home with them, while the other one will go in the kids' bathroom which is a beach theme.  These will encourage us to go on a rabbit trail over the next few days to find out more about these neat critters.

• http://www.gma.org/Tidings/sanddollar.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_dollar
• http://www.ehow.com/how_17517_find-sand-dollars.html

#2.  Skate Case.  These are sometimes called "mermaid purses" but a friend calls them "the devil's pocketbook."  This one was very neat because it was INTACT -- usually when they wash up on shore, they have a slit in them where the baby skate hatched out.  We took it home and disected it.  No baby skate was inside, which lead to a lot of questions that my daughter and I batted around.  Did it just not develop?  Was it even fertilized?  Could it have gotten out a different way?  The case is very sturdy, almost like a black leather.  Another fun creature that we to explore ...

• http://www.njmsc.org/Education/Lesson%20Plans/Skates.html  (has facts about skates & neat pictures of baby skates hatching!)
• http://www.elasmodiver.com/big_skate.htm (cool pics of Big Skates)
• http://www.sharktrust.org/cgi/eggcase/index.asp  (very neat site with lots of info, and ideas to encourage your little marine biologists -- perhaps they can do a fact finding mission and count and measure skate cases on your beach)