Casual beachcombers may walk the beaches for years and not notice
them, but “micros” (as they are known in the jargon of shell collectors) represent a big parcel of the local diversity of mollusks. Ranging in dimensions from half an inch to the size of a grain of sand, micros may be as handsome as their larger counterparts. To find micros, collectors take home coarse sand scooped by the water line, then search for them using a hand lens or small microscope.
Found locally on Sanibel and Captiva, handsome Seila adamsii reaches a maximum size of half an inch.