Club that collects shells hits silver anniversary
A local group celebrating its silver anniversary this week came out of its shell 25 years ago.
The Grand Strand Shell Club will have its 25th anniversary celebration at 7 p.m. Thursday at Tupelo Bay Golf Center’s clubhouse in Garden City Beach. Meeting there monthly on the second Thursday, nine months a year, the club also stays engaged with shell displays across Horry and Georgetown counties, and welcomes new members.
The club’s president, Laura Rusinko of the Bucksport area, also a substitute teacher for more than a decade at Conway Middle School, shared some of the joy of searching for, finding and preserving some seaside treasures from Mother Nature, and hobnobbing with other shell seekers in this hobby that can delight anyone of any age.
Rusinko said she and husband Bob Rusinko — who will mark their 24th wedding anniversary this year — got involved with the club about eight years ago, and that the membership today, still with one of the founding members, Hal Keiser, numbers about 80.
Question | What are the most common shells found along the Grand Strand?
Answer | Whelk shells; the S.C. state shell, the lettered olive; channel whelks; and the Pawleys Island Venus shell.
Q. | What shell type is the easiest to identify?
A. | The olive shell, because if you find an olive shell, it is as shiny as anything. Most people can recognize oyster and clam shells, even though there are a number of species of them.
Q. | After a tropical storm breezes by and roughs up the waves, what types of more obscure shells emerge?
A. | Normally, we have to be on a Bull Island shelling excursion [from Awendaw] … We have a coral out there that we haven’t identified yet that comes in after a storm; it’s 3 to 4 inches across.
Most people go looking for shark teeth, and we do find a lot of different smaller shells; my husband finds them all the time. For me, the teeth have to bump and bite me to find them.
Indian artifacts wash up, and, of course, we pick up fossils … my house is full of them.
Q. | Where has the club assembled displays?
A. | We have one at the state welcome center in Little River; it has been there about six years; that has our personal collection in it. We just took down our display at the Carolina Forest branch of the Horry County Memorial Library that was up there for about a month. We helped redo the one at the Children’s Museum of South Carolina, in Myrtle Beach. … Our big one is at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center, and we did one for the Georgetown County Museum; one of our members lives in Georgetown County, and she donated a lot of her shells to the museum.
Q. | What’s the crown jewel of each display?
A. | Usually, I try to put in local shells; usually, those are what most people want to know about. … I might have 30 local shells in a display. …
When I did the display at the Carolina Forest Library, I put in a nautilus, a foreign shell that also shows the mathematical basis for Pi – 3.14: Every section on it is one-third bigger than the one before it.
Q. | What makes up the monthly meetings and other events for club outreach?
A. | We meet at the Tupelo Bay Golf Center clubhouse, on the second Thursday monthly, except for July, August and December. We’ll have a small auction in February. It’s only $12 a year in membership dues, and members get nine newsletters, sometimes 10. I do talks at places, too. At Homewood Elementary School in Conway, we did a presentation with every grade level and have had events at Huntington Beach State Park and Myrtle Beach State Park. We also go out and help with beach cleanups, and we also do a shell show at the annual “3-in-1 Day” in March at Atalaya, in Huntington Beach State Park. …
In March, we’re going to the Outer Banks; we’ll drive up on a Friday and stay until Sunday.
Q. | If people want to start a shell collection, what are the basic things needed?
A. | First, they need to get a book they can use for identifying shells. The National Audubon Society has a great one for the East Coast that shows more than just shells. We carry a pail, and my husband makes scoops for people who don’t like to bend over. Also, they have to remember: If they see something alive, to put it back. With sand dollars, it’s pretty easy to see if they’re alive or dead; if they’re brown and fuzzy, they’re probably alive. In a lot of shell books, … there’s an article on how to clean the shells. We give out handouts on shell ID and on how to clean them (see details in fact box).
Every month in the newsletter, I put in an article on a different shell or sometimes compare a couple of shells. The standing title of my article is “Education Gone Wild,” because sometimes it gets wild.
Q. | Any types of shells among your favorites?
A. | I’m very partial to the nautilus because it is a perfect shell, and there are so many local shells; I really do like our state shell, the lettered olive.
Surprisingly enough, when we do our shows, we give away shells, and for some reason, everybody wants those big clams.
Q. | What makes shelling such a universal pastime, and for multiple generations?
A. | It is a hobby for all ages. In fact, we have two or three members who are younger than 30. We are trying to get some more, younger members involved. We also would like to see if some high schools would like to start their own shell clubs. …
We have one gentleman who lives in England; I met him for the first time at our Christmas party, and he’s going to be at our anniversary party. And we have another couple from Canada. We were really excited at our Christmas party to have three different countries represented at one meeting.
This story was originally published January 4, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Club that collects shells hits silver anniversary."