2026North Sea Shells - Sheetlets

North Sea shells are the hard calcareous skeletons of mollusks. They often wash ashore on beaches in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. For most children, searching for shells along the high tide line is an essential part of a day at the beach, just like building sandcastles. This is mainly because they often look beautiful, have unique colors, and feel very different to the touch. For adult beach walkers, too, they constitute one of the most interesting finds along the coast. Since 2021, an annual shell counting day has even been held. On Saturday, March 21, 2026, hundreds of volunteers took to the Dutch beaches for the fifth time to count shells. More than 108,000 shells were recorded. On the Dutch coast, the truncated surf clam and oval surf clam are the most common. On the beaches of Zeeland and the Wadden Islands, it is the cockle. The razor clam was mainly found in Zeeland, and most razor clams washed ashore in North Holland.