What Is This?? Weird Discovery Washes Up On Wildwood, NJ, Beach
It's not a rarity to find random shells, debris, and other oddities wash up along the beaches here in the Garden State. Usually, they're all easily identifiable. Shells wash up by the dozen, if not hundreds at a time. It's not uncommon to see a hermit crab or two. You might even come across a horseshoe crab from time to time.
There are, however, instances in which something will wash ashore that can't be identified right away. After all, we're not all marine biologists. So, what do we do if we discover something weird or odd has washed up onto our favorite NJ beach? Well, we head to social media, of course!
There are plenty of locally-based Facebook groups all dedicated to the goings-on of your favorite beach town. The beach town we're concentrating on today is Wildwood. Somebody came across what looks like a string of stacked onion rings (or potato chips) on a rope that apparently washed up onto the Wildwood beach recently. Naturally, the person who discovered this oddity took a picture of it to share with the world.
Upon it getting uploaded to Facebook, multiple people claiming to have solid marine biology backgrounds have revealed that the picture is showing off whelk eggs. If you're asking yourself what in the heck is a whelk, then you're not alone. I wasn't aware that there was a difference between a whelk and a conch until reading the comments under this post.
The debate was sparked when someone claimed the picture showcased whelks eggs. Multiple people responded saying that eggs actually come from a conch. We've all heard of conches, right? Conch shells. Whelks are very similar to conches, but are actually not the same thing. In fact, after doing some research, you'll discover that New Jersey doesn't actually have any conch shells at all. Those big shells that wash up on the beach may resemble conches, but they're actually whelks. This picture does, indeed, show what whelk eggs look like.
You learn something new every day, right? The next time you see something that looks like potato chips on a string on the beach, you'll know that they're whelk eggs.
Source: Facebook
