Sammy Snail  introduces sites most suitable for kids or the young at heart!

A word of caution, some of these sites may be slow loading due to the photo content, especially if you have an older browser.  Don’t let that stop you from visiting them; there are many wonderful scans and photos to view to make your wait well worth while.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the many fabulous "shell intense" sites. With the advent of digital photography, 3D scanners, exceptional cameras of every description, the WWW is packed full of eye tantalizing photos of almost every mollusc around.

Many commercial dealers and auctions now offer photo pages. These are well worth visiting as they are often a great source of photos of very rare shells.

I have tried to place a few of the sites that I enjoy visiting on this page; but , by no means have I even covered a fraction of the sites showing wonderful molluscan photos.

Avril Bourquin

• Aegean Shells:  many hundreds of great shell photos and scans plus some great photos of living molluscs.
  

• Australian Shells Homepage:  site owned by Capricornica Publications Natural History Books:  an on-line identification guide for Australian shells.

• Chan Sow Yan's "Molluscan Pictures.com": (Singapore)   A great data base of shell images and shellers  resources.

• Chilean Sea Shells: A site dedicated to shells from Chile, Easter Island and Juan Fernandez Island. Webmaster is Veronica Ramirez   /  La página contiene fotos e información sobre Caracoles y Conchas Chilenas Continentales y de:Isla de Pascua e Isla Juan Fernández;  Además tiene Link a el web de la sociedad Malacologica Chilena

• CL Shells Photo Page:  This site is dedicated to the beauty of the undersea world and our fascination with the creatures that bring it to life. Special emphasis is paid to mollusks: The wonderful animals that make shells.

• Conchology  by Guido Poppe:  Guido has page upon page of fabulous shell photos and scans. This is a must see site for any serious collector of shells.

• CONCHOLOGY - The Art & Science of Nature:
  at www.worldwideconchology.com with hundreds of shell images, as well as multimedia presentations, shell articles, a conchology quiz, games and diversions, and links to important Web shell resources.

• Cypraea Net  Pasquali Fazzini:  A wonderful data base and image site on cowries.  Other pages of interest are:  international cowrie collectors;  listing of cowrie books;  other links of interest;  news and references.  This is a must see if you are interested in cypraeas. 

• eNature.com     Shells:  Very limited number of pictures, but what there is are fairly good.

• EurasiaShells.net: Emmanuel Guillot de Suduiraut;  .O. 184 Lapu-Lapu City, 6015 CEBU Philippines;  Email:  conchyliologie@eurasiashells.net:  More than 380 species are illustrated including several Holotypes and Paratypes. You can find undetermined specimen and others rarely represented in literature. All gastropods illustrated exclusively come from Philippines and in particularly from five geographic areas well delimited.

• Femorale: Check out their great

• Faunistik der Weichtiere Nord- und Südtirols  by Helmut Nisters:  Check-list and bibliography of the inland-shells from Tyrol (Austria) and South-Tyrol (Northern-Italy).   This site is divided into several very interesting sections.  There are three separate albums of "collections" of landshells from the Tyrol region. Before hopping into the usual albums, take it a little slower, take the tour of the museum / castle, and read the interesting and informative material on the species collected on the grounds of the museum itself. Once you open an album, and click on the link to an image, click again on the "thumbnail" image to increase it to full screen. The images themselves load in average time and include collection and contact data for each specimen shown. An excellent feature of this site is the photo log included at the bottom of each album. If you haven't yet tried your hand at this type of photography, and are a little daunted by some of the discussions of photography on the Net, here is the data without the hype!

• Fotosearch.com: "Shells" "Foto Search Image Library offers over one million images in its extensive online archive, including photography, clipart, illustrations, footage, and maps. It offers your users the opportunity to view world-class photography and art free of charge. It is the digital, online equivalent of a conventional art museum. Browsing through the library is free, and there are no access charges, registration requirements, or usage limits."

• General Mollusc Collection - Wayne State University These are pictures of shells from the Wayne State University.

• George Sangiologlu's Under Water World:  (Greece) These pages of George’s are a must to see.  Fabulous is the only word that I can use.

• Hardy's Internet Guide to Marine Gastropods: "A partly illustrated catalogue of Gastropods with references to books in my small library and some guidelines on how I have put this together plus update history..."

• Heterobranchia from around the world: 

• Jacksonville, Florida Shell Club Image pages. These are indeed fabulous photographs.

  • Rare Shells of S. Peter Dance, 1969:  In 1969, S. Peter Dance published his book “Rare Shells” in which he illustrated and discussed fifty shells which had an interesting and often exciting history….. Jacksonville’s Shell Club member, Harry G. Lee was presented with a copy of this book as a gift in 1976 and he aggressively embarked on a quest to assemble a collection of all fifty shells.  This web page is a pictorial compilation of this collection

• Iconography of Cypraeidae:  by Felix Lorenz:  This file shows images of all recent Cowry-taxa.

Image Quest a natural history photographic company with quite a marine photo library.  This is a great site to visit.  Use their Search Page and such entities as Molluscs, micro marine, nudibranch, etc. (Commercial site all inmages are copyrighted)

Malacological Cabinet :  Enter the world of malacology, shells and molluscs.  This website displays not often see molluscs and is a linked index for noncommercial educational/informational molluscs-related websites.

Malakos.com:  Marc Agren Specimen Shells;  "Your cabinet to the world of malacology/conchology" Iconography Page

Malakos: by Alfonso Pina,:  Malaga, Spain:    Un lugar para los amantes de los Moluscos y coleccionistas de conchas:

The Place For Mollusc Lovers and Seashell Collectors:  “This site is written in Spanish (but the images are also in English) and it deals mainly with European molluscs.  It is intended as educational site, but you can also find interesting things beyond that, such as a complete guide to classify European molluscs, an art gallery, articles, links (including some that you miss), a Latinamerican Molluscs gallery, books comments, and both Biological and Sistematic parts that are far from complete. –Alfonso”

Mollusc Picture Gallery: Australian Museum

Mollusca: by Wolfgang Fischer

Molluscan Pictures Mary Ho and Chan Sow-Yan made a site focusing on malacology in Singapore.  Pictures of Pacific marine & non-marine species arranged by family

New Caledonian Seashells :  by Vincent Crayssac A Commercial site; but some good pictures.  I find the site to be quite slow in loading

NOAA Central Library:  How to search the library page    Collections Page   Marine Invertebrate Page   This is a wonderful site and you can spend hours looking at everything from space pictures to walruses 

Nudibranchs:  I think every link on my Nudibranch links page has fabulous photos of these brilliantly coloured molluscs.

OceanLight.com: Phillip Colla is a natural history photographer, videographer and writer specializing in wild marine mammals (whales, dolphins, seals), remote islands of the eastern Pacific and the California kelp forest. This site displays several thousand examples of his work.

Philippines - Cebu Shell News: " Of all the countries around the world, the Philippines archipelago, with over 7000 islands, boasts the largest, most diversified selection of seashell species. Cebu Island, which is well known as the preverbial hub of all shelling activities within the Philippines is nestled in the center of the Visayan Island group.
From our website, on a biweekly basis, we plan on offering you a diverse selection of specimen shells unique in size, pattern, and coloration. All of these shells are endemic to Philippine waters and destined to become more precious and valuable to the serious specimen collector." Alain Prugne Jean Pierre Barbier

SeaShell.com: This bilingual site is getting a nice accumulation of shell and living mollusc pictures

University of Ottawa Mollusca Web: Album Thumbnails

Worldwide Conchology:  by Richard Goldberg – This is the noncommercial web page.  Richard is doing a marvelous job on this new educational website.

World Sea Shells Explains the phylum Mollusca. With listing and background information plus hundreds of great pictures!

Worldwide Chitons (WWC) ; a new website by ! Doug Eernisse, Associate Professor, California State University Fullerton, Department of Biological Science, for promoting the study of chitons worldwide...." This website presents links to chiton images and an introdion