Old cockles and record number of shells at the eighth edition of the Big Seashell Survey

The eighth edition of the Big Seashell Survey was a record-breaking event. No fewer than 3,500 participants scoured 400 km of coastline in northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, collecting and identifying nearly 150,000 shells from 72 different species. This year, the differences between the three countries were less pronounced, with the cut trough shell ranking as the most frequently found species across all regions. The Atlantic jackknife clam, the banded wedge shell, and the common cockle consistently appeared in the top five. A one-time focus on the cockle in Belgium revealed that most of these shells originated in a distant past, with only a handful of live populations remaining in the shallow continental North Sea.