Please join the Sustainable Communities Workshop partners at Southface Sarasota at the Florida House on Saturday, November 6 at 4 p.m. for a fascinating program on seashells, the animals that build them, and what they have to tell us about the changing oceans.

Seashells have been the most coveted and collected of nature’s creations since the dawn of humanity. They were money before coins, jewelry before gems, art before canvas.

In her new book The Sound of the Sea, acclaimed Florida environmental author Cynthia Barnett blends cultural history and science to trace our long love affair with seashells and the hidden lives of the mollusks that make them. Spiraling out from the great cities of shell that once rose in southwest Florida to the warming waters of the Maldives and the slave castles of Ghana, Barnett has created an unforgettable account of the world’s most iconic seashells. She begins with their childhood wonder, unwinds surprising histories like the origin of Shell Oil as a family business importing exotic shells, and charts what shells and the soft animals that build them are telling scientists about our warming, acidifying seas.