Sea of Cortez Shells and Sea Snails

This page links to some of the living seashells we saw and photographed during two short trips to the Sea of Cortez, the first in the Muleje area in July 1983 and the second on the other side near San Carlos in September 1985. This page includes shelled gastropods; nudibranchs and their relatives are figured on another page. Both trips were made back in the old days of film cameras, and most of my 36 exposures per dive were saved for nudibranchs and sea slugs, so photos of shells were rather limited. In addition, all photos were taken with a Nikonos submersible camera and extension tubes, limiting the sizes of possible subjects. Getting living animal photos of shells usually requires patience. Disturbed animals tend to retract into their shells and often will not come out for some time. Our dive trips were of limited duration, and I rarely would spend the time to wait for a shell's animal to show itself, so the photos below represent only a small fraction of the species we actually did see there. Shells were neither collected nor measured in the field, so any sizes given are just estimates.

Click a thumbnail below to see more images of that species or press the browser Back button to return to the previous page.