I have a large shell in my home. I remember seeing it in my grandparent’s home when I was a girl, and knowing that my grandfather had collected it. I would place my ear to it’s opening to hear the sound of the sea which I had never seen.

Later in life I learned it was a conch shell, and I did see the ocean and hear it for myself. But I knew very little about conches, or where the shell came from, or how my grandfather came to own one.

Early after picking up The Sound of the Sea, I turned to Cynthia Barnett’s chapter on the Queen Conch. She tells of the Lucayan culture that harvested and barbequed the Queen Conch before they were exterminated by 1513. Queen Victoria had a preference for shell cameos, and commissioned wedding commemoratives made of the shell. By the 1940s, the conch was suffering from over harvesting in the Keys, and repopulation efforts failed. By 2018, scientists determined that there were too few conch left in the Bahamas to reproduce. Efforts are being made to farm the conch, but with the ocean heating up from climate change, they are one more example of what we are losing.

“I had set out to listen to seashells as chroniclers of nature’s truth,” Barnett writes in her conclusion. “But as much as shells told about oceans, they had more to say about people.” Humans have used shells for food and to make tools. Shell collector’s mania drove up their value, driving over fishing. Shells decorated the boxes sold by an East Side London family who in a few generations turned the business into Shell Oil. Wealthy people ornamented their walls with shells and built grottos of shells. The were used for personal ornament and for money. As instruments they called alarms, were the voice of gods, and called people to worship. Christians who underwent the pilgrimage of St. James sewed shells onto their clothing, and giant clam shells were used for baptismal fonts.

Every chapter is a beautiful, fascinating look into science, history, and nature through a specific shell. I learned so much, my interest never flagging.

I knew about the history of the color purple from the murex shell. And had read about shells as money and how they were used in decorations. I have a hand made pin and earrings made of delicate shells that had belonged to my great-grandmother. But there was so much more to learn!

I found her chapter on Triton’s Trumpet and Chavin de Huantar in Peru one of the most fascinating histories in the book. High in the Andes, this ancient city predates the Incas, and consists of temples and underground galleries with running water and reflective walls, all created for religious awe and wonder. They had no written language, but the art depicts the use of shells in ritual, especially the conch.

To hear the ocean’s softest song, walk the Sothern beaches of Sanibel Island. Listen closely at the break line. As each wave pulls back to sea, a sparkly tinkle rises from the rumble; the roil of tiny shells.

from The Sound of the Sea by Cynthia Barnett
The book is a travelogue as well, with glorious descriptions of the places she visited.

She mentions the Michigan roadside attraction Sea Shell City, with its billboard of the Man Eating Clam. I finally got to visit it when I was a mother with an eager son, and saw the bins of shells and the clam on display. Stories abound of the clam in nature grasping the hand or foot of divers who met their death. WWII Navy manuals even advised how to free oneself from the clam!

After reading this book, I think about the beautiful shells I bought as a teenager, which later graced my mother’s shelf. The delicate Nautilus, the cream cone shell tipped in purple, the moon snail, the spiny armed shells. And, of course, about the conch sitting on the shelf in my home now. I had never considered the animals that had lived inside these beautiful homes, or about their impact on our world.

We are arrived at the breaking point. We have been greedy and selfish and it has wrecked havoc. Climate change is already remaking the world. There is so much still to be learned about the multitude of life in the oceans and the answers they hold to problems we face. Some are adapting, while others are disappearing. Barnett’s book brings an appreciation for what we are losing.

I received a free book through Amazon Vine. My review is fair and unbiased. ( )