>> [laughing] You can see -- So this is a little American alligator.

It's not a crocodile.

Okay, here we go.

Here's a couple more.

In fact, one of them just flew.

This seashore has been shaped by a variety of factors -- wind, currents, tides, and wave action -- and this particular beach is being shaped by erosion.

So this is the eroding end of a barrier island.

And so you can look back here -- This is called a boneyard beach.

You can see trees that have fallen in, you can see root balls that are visible.

This was once forest and what's happening is the ocean is taking back over.

It's hard to imagine that this sand is really made up of just two things.

It's made up of shells -- little marine invertebrates that have been pulverized into little, tiny sand particles -- and it's also made up of quartz.

And that quartz has come down from the Appalachian Mountains down brownwater rivers and it's deposited just north of here in the Atlantic Ocean.

The animals that live here have to be extremely resilient.

Let's spend a day at the beach and get a look at some of these incredible creatures.

You know, there are a lot of great fish that live right off the beach here, so I've got a rod -- I actually have one in the water already.

I'm going to hook up another one.

I've got a little bit of shrimp here.

Put a little bit on my circle hook and then, what I'm going to do is cast this out and see what we can catch.

So while we're waiting on a bite, I thought we might look for some animals that live under the sand and here is a great example of that.

This is a sand dollar.

I can just see the outline of his body, which is a perfect circle.

I'm going to scoop him up very carefully.

A lot of times, you find dead sand dollars.

This is a live one.

So sand dollars are actually more closely related to starfish.

They're echinoderms.

And they're covered with little, tiny tube feet and that's one of the ways that I can tell that this animal's alive.

When you find dead ones, all you find is the bony skeleton of them.

This guy, I can tell, has all these little tube feet and those tube feet are what allows this animal to move and actually burrow underneath the sand.

Fabulous animal.

Some people call these a "keyhole urchin".

That's another name for it.

Interesting creature.

Let's see what else we can find.

One of the coolest beach creatures is one that people almost never see.

In fact, it lives in the sand and I'm looking for something very specific -- I'm looking for a little, tiny hole that looks like it has little chocolate sprinkles around it.

Now, I have this thing right here.

This is a slurp gun of sorts and it's designed to suck up a column of sand and water and this will allow me, hopefully, to pull one of these creatures out of the sand so we can get a good look at him.

But the first step is to find some burrows where these things live.

Okay, here's one right here and it's kind of bubbling and that means it's active, so that means there's an animal inside here.

So I'm going to use this device right here and we're going to see if we can catch what's inside this burrow.

Ah, this is exactly what I was hoping to find.

This is an animal called a "ghost" shrimp.

Some people call these "mud" shrimp.

And one thing about these guys is they're amazingly delicate and that's probably because they spend their entire lives in burrows, so they don't need a hard protective coating like a lot of other crabs and shrimp do.

This guy does have a really neat claw that he uses to kind of protect his head and he'll pull that into position and that protects his head, which is the most vulnerable part of his body.

Now, he's shaped a little bit like a basic shrimp, but, boy, are they different-looking.

I mean, they look almost alien.

I mean, they look like something from a science-fiction movie, or something.

You notice these appendages right here, those are obviously designed to move water and they'll pull water into the burrow along with sediment that this animal can feed on.

This is a great example of hidden biodiversity -- creatures that live here that we're just absolutely not aware of.

Unless we knew exactly how to find a ghost shrimp, we'd never even know they lived here.

If you spend some time looking around in little tidepools like this, you can see some kind of neat things and this -- ow!

[laughing] This guy got a pretty good bite on me.

Let me peel him off my hands.

You know, it's amazing, how hard even little crabs can bite.

He's just got a little, tiny piece of skin here, so I can pry him off and I think I'll be fine.

[laughs] Man.

They have like little vises.

Okay, good, we got him off.

So this is a speckled swimming crab.

Beautiful little crab.

Great coloration.

It looks like most swimming crabs.

It has those paddles on the back feet and, of course, walking legs and also the claws that they use for feeding and also to protect themselves as well.

This cryptic coloration.

You notice he's got this beautiful pattern on him and that pattern is really good for blending in with the sand.

This is a crab that you commonly find on the beach and he has to be able to blend in to the environment that he lives in.

He also has to be a fairly athletic crab because he has to race in and out with the waves, so he's got to have the strength to be able to deal with a really rough place to live.

These guys have the amazing ability to disappear under the sand, so, if you put them down, they just back in underneath the sand and, of course, this is what protects them from gulls and fish and all sorts of other predators that like to eat small crabs like this.

Okay, we got a bite.

I think we got something.

I think we may have something on.

The waves make it really hard to tell.

Yeah, there's definitely something on here.

I'll tell you what -- the weather has taken a turn for the worse.

Oh, cool!

So it's a little shark.

This looks like a little baby Atlantic sharpnosed and this is a pup from this year, so this is one that was just born very, very recently.

Of course, probably right off the beach here and this is an animal that'll get about that long, as an adult, and it'll spend its whole life living in these waters.

But what they typically do is move offshore when the water gets really cold.

So they move offshore or a little bit south and then they'll come back to the same beach next year.

So I'm going to to get the hook out of this little guy.

And I've knocked the barbs down on these hooks so that it won't hurt the shark very much, to catch it.

Rinse this guy off a little bit.

So this is one of our smallest shark species, the Atlantic sharpnose and, typically, these things will have some white spots on them.

This one's still a very young shark and it'll take her 2 or 3 years to reach adult size.

But you notice it has little black tips on the fins and a lot of sharks have this, so, just because there are black tips, it does not mean it's a blacktip shark.

A lot of people want to call all the sharks that you catch on the beach "sand" sharks and, in reality, we don't have a true sand shark here.

We have things like this Atlantic sharpnose.

All right, I'm going to go ahead and get this little guy back in the water.

It looks like the weather's getting kinda bad.

It looks like we may have a thunderstorm coming in, or something.

So I'm going to let him go.

So this is not your typical beach.

It's a wonderful combination of sandy beach and silty mudflats.

The key to it is particle size.

Let me show you what I'm talking about.

I've got this glass of clear water and I want to put some sand in it.

And notice how quickly these particles fall to the bottom.

That's because they're heavy, so they're falling down much more quickly.

These are the particles that would be on the more dynamic portion of the beach that gets a lot of wave action.

Now, this is a different section of the beach, so let's take a look at the particle size here.

Twirl this around.

Notice this is not clearing very quickly.

This is much smaller sediment.

In fact, this is silt and it's going to remain suspended in the water much longer.

Now, I'll tell you why this is important -- because not all animals use the same portion of the beach.

Some of them like these silty areas and some of them, of course, like that much coarser sand.

Comparing silt to sand is like comparing a golf ball to a basketball.

Tidal pools like this are a great place to find animals, but you got to really slow down and take the time to look for them.

In fact, you kind of got to track them.

And, if we look right here, you'll see a squiggly line that goes along through the mud here and stops right here.

And I'll bet, if we dig down into the end of this trail right here, we'll see something really cool.

So let's see if we can dig this guy up.

I feel him and here he is.

It's a baby horseshoe crab.

And this one was probably hatched out last year.

And adult horseshoe crabs will come up on the beach here and they'll lay their eggs and most of these eggs get eaten by birds and fish and other things, but some of them make it and grow into these little horseshoe crabs.

Now, these guys have to spend almost their entire lives hidden.

They tunnel along underneath the sand and this protects them from all sorts of things that want to eat them.

They also have spikes.

They have the telson, which really isn't much of a weapon, but they have some pretty impressive spines on their back, so a lot of things would think twice about eating them.

If they're lucky enough to get big enough or not eaten by a predator, these guys may get -- females get this big around or so; and males, slightly smaller and they'll probably come up on the same beach and lay their eggs later on.

If you look really closely, this whole area is just littered with these little trails, so there are literally millions of horseshoe crabs in this area.

Unless you really take the time, you're just not going to see them.

And, of course, that's the whole plan for the horseshoe crabs.

You know, the sediment along here is really fine and it's great for certain gastropods and this is exactly what I was looking for.

And you see a lot of these here and you can just see part of the shell sticking out.

This is very likely one of the whelks and they spend most of their lives underground.

Now, these things are major predators and they feed on things like clams and other bivalves and even other gastropods.

So let's dig this guy up.

And this is a big one, I can tell, so I'm going to squeeze underneath him.

I'm going to and pull him out of the sand.

[laughing] And you can see -- now, he's closing up.

He's pumping all that water out and closing up.

He's got this cover called an operculum.

You see all the water flying out.

Now, what's really cool about this one -- this is a lightning whelk.

I was expected to see a knobbed whelk, but I can tell this is a lightning whelk because it's left-handed.

You know, if you pick up a knobbed whelk, it's going to be right-handed.

See how you could stick your hand in to the left side?

So this is, as I was saying, a major predator.

It feeds on bivalves.

It'll eat clams.

And what it likes to do is grab a clam and it uses its big muscular foot to pull that clam against this sharp edge and it pulls with so much force that it can actually open up the bivalve and push its foot and its stomach, actually, inside and consume the clam.

I'll tell you -- it is really cool, to live in a part of the world where you have this much diversity of life around you.

If you're lucky enough to find an oyster rake like this, you're likely to find a real concentration of animals because a lot of animals like to remain hidden and they hide in stuff like this.

Here's another really neat trail to follow and, if we follow right along here... [laughs] I know what it's going to terminate in and you come up to this guy.

And this is one of the moon snails, a shark eye, Atlantic moon snail, and it gets that name because the top of the shell here looks a little bit like the eye of a shark.

Great name for this animal.

And you see it's got this huge, huge foot and these guys will tunnel along on this large foot and with just a little bit of the shell exposed and they key in on the smell of bivalves and other moon snails and things like that, that they like to eat, and they feed on them.

Once they find one, they will take their radula, which is this sort of raspy mouth part and they will just work away at a shell until they make this beautiful little beveled hole in it and then they stick in their proboscis ("pro-BAW-sis") or "pro-BOSS-kiss" and they secrete an enzyme that causes the animal to relax a little bit, so that they can work the shell open, if it's a bivalve; or get inside; and then, they can actually feed on the other animal.

Incredible predator and you can see this guy's just kind of tunneling along on my hand.

He's starting to shrink up a little bit, so I'm going to let this guy go, let him go about his business.

[laughing] I've assembled a nice selection of hermit crabs here and these are all ones that I found right in this area.

Now, this is really all the same species of hermit crab, but they use different kinds of shells and that's what's so cool.

These are thinstripe hermit crabs, but some of them have chosen channeled whelks, like this one.

Some of them have chosen knobbed whelks.

Here's a moon snail.

So that's a big one.

Boy, that's about as big as moon snails get.

A couple others, and then, this is the really cool one.

This is a horse conch and this is a baby horse conch.

They get, you know, this long or so.

It's one of the biggest gastropods in the entire Southeast.

They get massive -- 2 feet long.

Let's look at one of these guys up close.

All these are inhabited, but what they've done is they've tucked their bodies way down inside the shell.

Let me see if I can get one that'll come out a little bit more.

But hermit crabs are quite different from other crabs and they have 10 legs -- decapods, like other crabs -- but the last two legs are used primarily to hold on to the inside of the shell.

Now, they don't have a hard exoskeleton, the way blue crabs and some of the others do.

Their bodies are much softer.

Now, they do have claws, two claws, and they use those to break up small things and pick up things off the bottom and feed on them, but the real advantage these guys have is this shell and this shell protects them from all kinds of predators and, if they didn't have this, with their soft bodies, they would certainly get eaten.

And every now and then, you'll see a bird pulling a hermit crab out of its shell.

Now, periodically, hermit crabs have to change shells and that means they have to find a shell that's maybe a little bit bigger, maybe a little more attractive to them, and shells are quite a commodity in this area.

I mean, on the beach here.

So if you put a shell down with no crab in it, it would not be long at all before that becomes inhabited by a type of hermit crab.

The beach is divided into 3 zones.

The first zone is the subtidal.

So we're at low tide, so this area is inundated by water all the time.

Creatures that live here have to be submerged in the water all their lives.

The next zone is what's called the intertidal zone, and that's the "area between the low-tide mark and the high-tide mark" and that zone starts right here and it ends... right here.

Animals that live in this zone have to have the ability to stay submerged for many hours a day and then completely dry.

They also have to be able to handle very cool temperatures and very, very hot temperatures.

The intertidal zone often has tidal pools in it and these pools are filled with all kinds of small fish and other creatures.

Above the high-tide line is what's called the supralittoral zone and that's the "area that includes the dunes and the very edges of the maritime forest."

And this is a harsh place to live and it isn't usually inundated by water.

In fact, it's only inundated during very heavy storms or extremely high tides, but it is influenced by salt spray.

This zone is also where sea turtles nest.

So sea turtles will crawl up on the beach, crawl all the way up above the high-tide line, and that's where they lay their eggs.

And you can see right behind us, there's an area that's roped off that's a sea turtle nest.

This particular nest had 70 eggs in it and they were laid earlier this year.

There's a covering over this thing and that's to protect it from a variety of predators.

Lots of things love to eat sea turtle eggs.

They're full of nutrition.

Raccoons, foxes, ghost crabs, and a variety of other predators will try and get in and feed on those eggs.

One of the other problems is people.

We need to leave these eggs alone.

We want these eggs to hatch and we want these turtles to be able to get back down to the water, swim out in the ocean, and start a life of their own.

One of the other things you notice are these wrack lines and these are areas where floating debris, especially plant material and even dead-animal carcasses and things, have kind of floated up and stayed there at the high-tide line.

We've had a couple of really big tides, so this line of wrack on the very top edge is obviously from a huge spring tide.

Let's walk up into the dunes and get a look at some of the life that lives up in here.

Here's an animal that you don't get to see during the day, very often, but I saw the burrow.

I've seen a lot of burrows.

If you look really closely in there, you can actually see the crab.

This is the burrow of a ghost crab.

This is an animal that is a tremendous burrower and spends most days underneath the sand.

And you can see a pile of sand here that he's excavated out of this hole and that gives you a pretty good idea how deep this hole actually is.

This guy is just partially down the hole and what I'm going to do is try and scoop my hand underneath and see if I can get a hold of him.

You can see he's come out.

Now, ghost crabs have pretty good claws, so I'm going to be a little careful with this guy.

Got him.

Got him.

This guy ran off, but I managed to catch him.

He got hung up in some wrack, so I was able to catch him.

This is that ghost crab I was talking about and they have amazing claws.

You can see this guy has little serrations, both on the outside of his claws and also on the inside.

These things can stay out of water for a long time.

As long as their gills stay fairly moist, they can live on land.

Now, they are capable.

They're good swimmers and, sometimes, you can see them just run right into the water, right into the surf.

In fact, if you chase them, that's one of the things that happens.

It's how they get away.

Ghost crabs eat a lot of different things -- dead fish on the beach.

They're pretty much scavengers, but one of the things they also like to eat is sea turtle eggs.

And they will actually burrow down into a sea turtle nest that's full of eggs and feed on those eggs and, of course, you know, a lot of them won't hatch.

I'm going to put this guy down and I'll tell you -- he is going to be gone.

There he goes.

If you're a plant, this is a pretty rough place to make a living.

And this beach morning glory, for instance, is growing in really dry sand.

I mean, the roots spread out across here and help to hold the soil.

Here's another plant.

This is a sandspur and this is the nemesis of anybody wearing flip-flops or bare feet at the beach.

These things have very, very sharp little spines on them and, if you step on one of these, of course, it sticks to you, it sticks in your foot, or whatever.

But also, if it attaches to an animal, the animal walks off with it and then carries this thing, which is a seed, and, of course, it ends up germinating somewhere else, away from the original plant.

Let's walk up and see what else we can see.

One of the best-known of all beach plants, or plants that live in the dunes, is this one right here.

These are sea oats.

Now, these things are very, very important because they have massive root structures which have a tendency to hold the sand and hold the dunes together and prevent erosion.

Another thing that is really, really important are covered walkways like this.

When we walk across the dunes, we can do a lot of damage, so just a simple addition of a raised wooden walkway like this can really help to protect the dunes.

You find some live animals at the beach, but the majority of what you find are things like this -- shells of an animal that died and washed up onshore.

I've invited my good friend Bruce Lampright.

Bruce is the naturalist from Brays Island -- Bruce, good to see ya -- And he's going to show us some of the creatures that live on our local beaches.

Bruce, what do you got?

>> Well, see what you got there, Tony.

This is one of the many species of bivalves -- "animals with two shells" -- called an "ark" and this is the incongruous ark, would have another valve, or shell, that wouldn't quite fit with this one, so it's incongruous, so great name for that.

Very common on our beaches.

>> Yeah, and this is one that you see a lot of, isn't it?

>> It is, very common.

I picked up some things here today that, some are not so common here, some are quite common up on the beaches.

Some are from right here, in shallow water.

Some are from deep water, that find their way all the way to the beach, like this calico scallop.

>> Boy, that's a beautiful shell.

>> Found in waters up to about 100 feet deep or more.

So can wash way in and that's a big collector's item.

People love to pick those up.

A big buy, a big bivalve.

Again, is one of the quahog clam.

>> Yeah, I always don't know whether they're called "KWAY-hog" or "CO-hog".

>> "CO-hog".

Q-u-a-h-o-g, but "CO-hog" is the pronunciation.

>> Boy, that's a big one, too.

>> And this one was just recently dead when I picked it up.

Cleaned it out a little bit.

This is the Southern quahog clam.

>> This would not be good eating.

>> Very chewy, even in chowder.

You'd have to chop it up and, even then, it'd be tough.

But this is the Southern cousin to the Northern quahog clam that we have right there with the purple on it.

Beautiful purple coloring.

And this is the one that makes up most of our commercial industry here in South Carolina.

>> And this is a better eating size.

>> Much better, and even smaller than that would be, you know, for the half-shell or for very tender raw, if you like to eat them that way.

Another one that people like to eat is one that's not that common on the beaches.

This is one of the two pen shells, p-e-n.

This is the rigid pen shell and its cousin, the sawtooth pen shell.

And shrimpers tell me that these are excellent eating when they drag a few up, once in a while, in their nets.

It has a piece of meat that looks much like a scallop.

>> And you're saying smooth and rough by the fact this one's much more rugose.

>> Exactly.

Big teeth on it.

These are more like a file and you could probably sand something with it.

>> And the name "pen" shell comes from the fact -- Is that right?

It looks a little bit like a pen.

>> And these would be anchored in the bottom offshore or in inlet mouths or inside the inlets.

So not right here on the high-energy sandy beach, which is a tough place for these mollusks to live.

I mean, when you think about it, waves crashing down.

I don't know if you can see these well, Tony, but these two little guys right here -- there's a dwarf surf clam and a coquina clam.

They're much better-adapted to living in this surf and this is the ones that you'll dig up and you'll see them scooting around here in the surf.

>> And I know, at times, you'll see sometimes the shore is just littered with these little surf clams.

>> Millions, just millions of them all over the place.

But, again, they live right in that surf.

>> And these are adults?

>> Those are full-sized adults there.

>> Pretty good comparison, one bivalve and another one.

>> It is.

Of course, our common Atlantic oyster here.

And when we talk about bivalves, animals with two shells, we talk about a righthand valve, this top one; and then, a lefthand valve, which is the bottom one, on an oyster, at least, that always attaches to something else.

Whether it's another oyster -- in this case, you can see the oyster shell there -- or anything hard.

You know, a soda bottle, anything like that.

They'll attach to a piling.

I brought with me kind of a neat fossil off the beach.

This one came from the upper part of South Carolina's beach, up in the Grand Strand and this is a fossil urchin.

Not a bivalve or a univalve, but a really neat specimen off the beach.

This one, from the late Cretaceous period, is about 65 to 70 million years old.

So things we could find on the beach, people may walk right by.

>> Bruce, you brought us some great things to look at.

This is some really neat stuff.

But, remember, this is a tiny fraction of what lives on and around this beach.

Bruce, thank you for joining us today.

And thank you for watching "Coastal Kingdom."