The Atrocious Shell Trade, Live Invertebrates as Jewelry

Attention Snorkel Bob and ForTheFishes, if you want something to complain about, try focusing your attention on the shell trade. I recently came across a sickening website, Shell Horizons, displaying many different shells, starfish, and corals that are being harvested for jewelry and home decor. The company displays images of countless dead snails and enormous coral colonies, making claims that all of the items they sell are non-endangered species cleared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Customs. However, they show images of Elkhorn corals (highly endangered), Tridacna clams, and a whole slew of other animals whose very existence is threatened. Making the situation even worse, images on their website show corals, still full of color, sitting in boats and on beaches drying out.

I have honestly never seen such disregard for ocean life. The images literally want to make you cry, or at least get angry enough to write an angry letter that will probably get ignored. I’ve purposefully left images from their site out of this article, more for copyright issues than anything else. But if you want a taste, just visit the Shell Horizons website and you’ll surely see more than you can stomach.