Solving the Seaside Snail Egg Mystery

It was our first day walking down the beach in Jose Ignacio – a bohemian beach town on Uruguay’s Southern coast. The sand was so fine you’d think it was 00 flour. We acclimated our bare feet to the heat of the sand and made our way down to the shoreline – seashells of purple and pink, mollusks, dead sand crabs, the usual sandy shore finds.

Then, off into the distance, we see an array of glowing balls. Kids kicking a soccer ball hardly paid heed to them, crushing the little balls or kicking them off as an annoyance.

Probably seaweed spores – they should’ve continued growing in the ocean, but instead have washed up on shore.

Maybe shark eggs? But wait, shark eggs aren’t that shape, and it turns out Uruguay doesn’t have a large shark population.

Maybe alien eggs? But everyone knows aliens don’t lay eggs.

Finally finding an intact egg, we examined further, living out our marine biologist alter egos. Inside of the each firm egg we found a set of hatchlings suspended in a thick gelatinous liquid. None of them were alive, and clearly the egg wasn’t doing it’s job anymore.

We asked locals and no one knew. We texted friends. We googled.

Finally, we found the egg match on google. These translucent orbs should have hatched into a gastropod called “adelomelon brasiliana,” only located in this region of the world.

They grow up to look like giant conchs, creating their own unique twirly shells over time. The eggs only washed up on shore because of the crazy thunderstorms they had a few days earlier.