The Sea Shell Islands

The Sea Shell Islands PDF Author: Elinore M. Dormer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Captiva Island (Fla.)
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
"Juan Ponce de Leon officially discovered the Sea Shell Islands, Sanibel and Captiva, in 1513 when he turned landward on the Gulf Coast of Florida and sailed south 'as far as some islands that make out to sea.' An abundant food supply attracted Indians before the Age of Discovery and their gold, gleaned from shipwrecks, brought the Spanish conquistadores, Slavers, pirates, marauding Seminoles -- all were part of the colorful, often tempestuous, history of these islands, now famous for sea shells. Mrs. Dormer's descriptions are informative and always lively, whether she's discussing and re-creating the accidental discovery of Sanibel and Captiva, making conjectures about a possible earlier visit by Amerigo Vespucci, or delving into the personal histories of some of the first permanent settlers on the two tiny isles. She makes it clear why such personages as Thomas A. Edison, Theodore Roosevelt and Edna St. Vincent Millay were drawn there as well. the present also is very real in The Sea Shell Islands as Islanders fight to keep the charms of another era against the almost insurmountable odds of explosive growth."--Publisher's description.

The Sea Shell Islands

The Sea Shell Islands PDF Author: Elinore M. Dormer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Captiva Island (Fla.)
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
"Juan Ponce de Leon officially discovered the Sea Shell Islands, Sanibel and Captiva, in 1513 when he turned landward on the Gulf Coast of Florida and sailed south 'as far as some islands that make out to sea.' An abundant food supply attracted Indians before the Age of Discovery and their gold, gleaned from shipwrecks, brought the Spanish conquistadores, Slavers, pirates, marauding Seminoles -- all were part of the colorful, often tempestuous, history of these islands, now famous for sea shells. Mrs. Dormer's descriptions are informative and always lively, whether she's discussing and re-creating the accidental discovery of Sanibel and Captiva, making conjectures about a possible earlier visit by Amerigo Vespucci, or delving into the personal histories of some of the first permanent settlers on the two tiny isles. She makes it clear why such personages as Thomas A. Edison, Theodore Roosevelt and Edna St. Vincent Millay were drawn there as well. the present also is very real in The Sea Shell Islands as Islanders fight to keep the charms of another era against the almost insurmountable odds of explosive growth."--Publisher's description.

The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans

The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans PDF Author: Cynthia Barnett
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393651452
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
A Science Friday Best Science Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year A Library Journal Best Science and Technology Book of the Year A Tampa Bay Times Best Book of the Year A stunning history of seashells and the animals that make them that "will have you marveling at nature…Barnett’s account remarkably spirals out, appropriately, to become a much larger story about the sea, about global history and about environmental crises and preservation" (John Williams, New York Times Book Review). Seashells have been the most coveted and collected of nature’s creations since the dawn of humanity. They were money before coins, jewelry before gems, art before canvas. In The Sound of the Sea, acclaimed environmental author Cynthia Barnett blends cultural history and science to trace our long love affair with seashells and the hidden lives of the mollusks that make them. Spiraling out from the great cities of shell that once rose in North America to the warming waters of the Maldives and the slave castles of Ghana, Barnett has created an unforgettable history of our world through an examination of the unassuming seashell. She begins with their childhood wonder, unwinds surprising histories like the origin of Shell Oil as a family business importing exotic shells, and charts what shells and the soft animals that build them are telling scientists about our warming, acidifying seas. From the eerie calls of early shell trumpets to the evolutionary miracle of spines and spires and the modern science of carbon capture inspired by shell, Barnett circles to her central point of listening to nature’s wisdom—and acting on what seashells have to say about taking care of each other and our world.

Breaking the Shell

Breaking the Shell PDF Author: Joseph H. Genz
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824873416
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
On the atoll of Rongelap in the northern seas of the Marshall Islands, apprentice navigators once learned to find their way across the ocean by remotely sensing how islands transform the patterning of swell and currents. Renowned for their instructional stick charts that model and map the interplay of islands and waves, these students of wave piloting techniques embarked on trial voyages to ruprup jo̧kur, a Marshallese expression roughly translated as “breaking the shell” of the turtle, which would confer their status as navigators. These traditional practices, already in decline with imposing colonial occupations, came to an abrupt halt with the Cold War–era nuclear weapons testing program conducted by the United States. The residents and their descendants are still trying to recover from the myriad environmental, biological, social, and psychological impacts of the nuclear tests. Breaking the Shell presents the journey of Captain Korent Joel, who, having been forced into exile from the near-apocalyptic thermonuclear Bravo test of 1954, has reconnected to his ancestral maritime heritage and forged an unprecedented path toward becoming a navigator. Paralleling the Hawaiian renaissance that centered on Nainoa Thompson learning from Satawalese navigator Mau Piailug, the beginnings of the Marshallese voyaging revitalization—a collaborative, community-based project spanning the fields of anthropology, history, and oceanography—involved blending scientific knowledge systems, resolving ambivalence in nearly forgotten navigational techniques, and deftly negotiating cultural protocols of knowledge use and transmission. Through Captain Korent’s own voyaging trial, he and a group of surviving mariners from Rongelap are, against one of the darkest hours in human history, “breaking the shell” of their prime identity as nuclear refugees to begin recovering their most intimate of connections to the sea. Ultimately these efforts would inaugurate the return of the traditional outrigger voyaging canoe for the greater Marshallese nation, an achievement that may work toward easing ethnic tensions abroad and ensure cultural survival in their battle against the looming climate change–induced rising ocean. Drawing attention to cultural rediscovery, revitalization, and resilience in Oceania, the Marshallese are once again celebrating their existence as a people born to the rhythms of the sea.

The Empty Seashell

The Empty Seashell PDF Author: Nils Bubandt
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801471966
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The Empty Seashell explores what it is like to live in a world where cannibal witches are undeniably real, yet too ephemeral and contradictory to be an object of belief. In a book based on more than three years of fieldwork between 1991 and 2011, Nils Bubandt argues that cannibal witches for people in the coastal, and predominantly Christian, community of Buli in the Indonesian province of North Maluku are both corporeally real and fundamentally unknowable.Witches (known as gua in the Buli language or as suanggi in regional Malay) appear to be ordinary humans but sometimes, especially at night, they take other forms and attack people in order to kill them and eat their livers. They are seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The reality of gua, therefore, can never be pinned down. The title of the book comes from the empty nautilus shells that regularly drift ashore around Buli village. Convention has it that if you find a live nautilus, you are a gua. Like the empty shells, witchcraft always seems to recede from experience.Bubandt begins the book by recounting his own confusion and frustration in coming to terms with the contradictory and inaccessible nature of witchcraft realities in Buli. A detailed ethnography of the encompassing inaccessibility of Buli witchcraft leads him to the conclusion that much of the anthropological literature, which views witchcraft as a system of beliefs with genuine explanatory power, is off the mark. Witchcraft for the Buli people doesn't explain anything. In fact, it does the opposite: it confuses, obfuscates, and frustrates. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida's concept of aporia—an interminable experience that remains continuously in doubt—Bubandt suggests the need to take seriously people's experiential and epistemological doubts about witchcraft, and outlines, by extension, a novel way of thinking about witchcraft and its relation to modernity.

Hawaiian Seashells

Hawaiian Seashells PDF Author: Mike Severns
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Shells
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description


Seashells

Seashells PDF Author: Budd Titlow
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781616731557
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
They have done time as jewelry and tools, as medicines, currency, and symbols of industry--and they have intrigued people, from beach-combing toddlers to serious scientists, since time began. Native interest meets natural history in this exquisitely illustrated account of the science and culture of seashells. With closeup photography and basic explanations of different shell types--univalves, bivalves, and cephalopods--how they are formed, what mollusks inhabit them, their morphology and life cycles, and much more, this is the book for anyone with an interest in seashells. This book includes information on the bewildering array of shell shapes, colors, sizes, and types, and describes where the different shells can be found throughout the world. As informative as it is visually arresting, the book will appeal to amateur and expert, collector and casual beachcomber.

Florida's Seashells

Florida's Seashells PDF Author: Blair E. Witherington
Publisher: Pineapple Press Inc
ISBN: 9781561643875
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
"Descriptive accounts, distribution maps, and 265 color photographs describe 252 species of mollusk shells as beachcombers are likely to find them"--P. [4] of cover.

Florida's Living Beaches

Florida's Living Beaches PDF Author: Blair Witherington
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1561649880
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The first edition of Florida's Living Beaches (2007) was widely praised. Now, the second edition of this supremely comprehensive guide has even more to satisfy the curious beachcomber, including expanded content and additional accounts with more than 1800 full-color photographs, maps, and illustrations. It heralds the living things and metaphorical life along the state's 700 miles of sandy beaches. The expanded second edition now identifies and explains over 1400 curiosities, with lavishly illustrated accounts organized into Beach Features, Beach Animals, Beach Plants, Beach Minerals, and Hand of Man.

Sea Shells of Island Beach

Sea Shells of Island Beach PDF Author: New Jersey. Department of Environmental Protection. Natural Areas Section
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mollusks
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description


Spirals in Time

Spirals in Time PDF Author: Helen Scales
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472911377
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
The beautifully written story of shells and their makers, and our relationships with them. Seashells are the sculpted homes of a remarkable group of animals: the molluscs. These are some of the most ancient and successful animals on the planet. But watch out. Some molluscs can kill you if you eat them. Some will kill you if you stand too close. That hasn't stopped people using shells in many ways over thousands of years. They became the first jewelry and oldest currencies; they've been used as potent symbols of sex and death, prestige and war, not to mention a nutritious (and tasty) source of food. Spirals in Time is an exuberant aquatic romp, revealing amazing tales of these undersea marvels. Helen Scales leads us on a journey into their realm, as she goes in search of everything from snails that 'fly' underwater on tiny wings to octopuses accused of stealing shells and giant mussels with golden beards that were supposedly the source of Jason's golden fleece, and learns how shells have been exchanged for human lives, tapped for mind-bending drugs and inspired advances in medical technology. Weaving through these stories are the remarkable animals that build them, creatures with fascinating tales to tell, a myriad of spiralling shells following just a few simple rules of mathematics and evolution. Shells are also bellwethers of our impact on the natural world. Some species have been overfished, others poisoned by polluted seas; perhaps most worryingly of all, molluscs are expected to fall victim to ocean acidification, a side-effect of climate change that may soon cause shells to simply melt away. But rather than dwelling on what we risk losing, Spirals in Time urges you to ponder how seashells can reconnect us with nature, and heal the rift between ourselves and the living world.