I was on the Nekton Pilot a couple weeks ago on their Cay Sal
itinerary. (It was a great trip.) At Orange Cay and several spots on
the Cay Sal Bank we saw a lot of large egg casings that nobody could
identify.

Being a trash collector, I picked up the first one I saw thinking it
was a piece of plastic. It was white, with ribs like the flexible
ducting for a clothes dryer. But on the bottom (which was resting on
the sand) it was flat, so it looked sort of like the cross-section of
spinal cord. It was about 6 inches long, and about 3 inches in
diameter. The ends were flat and they were closed over. I saw others
later in the week that were more biege than white.

I found the first one on the sand between two small coral heads. Most
of the other ones were in the open. There was no attachment, they
just drifted back and forth with the surge. Depth was mostly in the
15-25 foot range.

Al Rudderham wrote:

I was on the Nekton Pilot a couple weeks ago on their Cay Sal
itinerary. (It was a great trip.) At Orange Cay and several spots on
the Cay Sal Bank we saw a lot of large egg casings that nobody could
identify.

Being a trash collector, I picked up the first one I saw thinking it
was a piece of plastic. It was white, with ribs like the flexible
ducting for a clothes dryer. But on the bottom (which was resting on
the sand) it was flat, so it looked sort of like the cross-section of
spinal cord. It was about 6 inches long, and about 3 inches in
diameter. The ends were flat and they were closed over. I saw others
later in the week that were more biege than white.

I found the first one on the sand between two small coral heads. Most
of the other ones were in the open. There was no attachment, they
just drifted back and forth with the surge. Depth was mostly in the
15-25 foot range.

Sounds like whelk eggs, but the diameter is too big. Yer sure it was 3"?

Sounds like whelk eggs, but the diameter is too big. Yer sure it was 3"?

I think Mike's on the right track, but I don't recall seeing any that are 3
inches in diameter either. Here's a link to a picture. Maybe it will help.

http://fly.hiwaay.net/~dwills/pictures/whelk1a.gif

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 02:09:30 GMT, "Lee Bell"
leebell@ix.remove.netcom.com> wrote:

I think Mike's on the right track, but I don't recall seeing any that are 3
inches in diameter either. Here's a link to a picture. Maybe it will help.

http://fly.hiwaay.net/~dwills/pictures/whelk1a.gif

There is a similarity, but the ones in the photo look thin and
delicate, and the thing I saw and held seemed to be fairly thick and
rigid. Also, these appear to have a "spinal cord" running down one
side, while I saw was that one side was flattened and without the
ribs.

I've done some more poking on Google, and it doesn't seem like any
whelk is large enough to lay eggs this size. It must have been
something BIG, or it must have hurt.

I wish now I had counted the number of "segments" in each of the
things I saw. At the time they all seemed to be the same length. And
I wish I'd taken the time to measure one, and to get somebody to send
me a photo. Nobody on board could figure out what they were, but
there were lots to spot. At the time I figured the answer would be
obvious when I got home and was able to search the web.