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Quite a large tidal pool here on the reef flat, and when we first came up here to set up our transects we found this beautiful Baler Shell.
This is the animal here, and you would have seen it crawling around, and the siphon out the front is where it pulls in
water and takes out oxygen. It has a large foot, meaning it's a gastropod mollusc.
And it's a carnivore, it works its way around the tidal pool looking for other molluscs to feed on.
And it's quite a nice find, but we've got plenty in the collection so we'll leave this one here.
The other day we're on a reef flat and found Melo amphora, the giant Baler Shell.
We found a few Baler Shells as well, but we also found the egg case.
What they do is they lay the first layer of eggs onto a bit of rock, then start stacking the egg cases, egg cells if you like,
to form the case, which is hollow through the middle, it's got holes all through it so the water flow can go through to keep the circulation around the eggs.
And these just lay there on the reef flat until the live baby Baler Shells hatch out and crawl off.