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Large part of the western limit of the Mexican state Sonora is the roughly 1000 km (600 miles) long coastline of the Gulf of California. Beaches, mangroves and rocky shores alternate. The coastal area is hardly populated and there exist only three larger touristic places: Puerto Peñasco, Bahía de Kino, and San Carlos. The conditions for beach combing are excellent. Shells can be seen almost everywhere and in masses, often freshly dead and in a good state of preservation.

This page went online in November 2019, two years after I started my observations at the Sonoran coast between Golfo de Santa Clara in the north and Agiabampo in the south. In the last years I extended my observation to the opposite coastline of the Baja California peninsula and to the state of Sinaloa. Since the beginning in November 2017 I could indicate nearly 700 mollusc species.Besides observation, I take notes on the geology of the area, and the sedimentology of the beaches. I concentrate on shells that are visible without a magnifying glass, so everything larger than five millimetres.

I feel that the shells from the Gulf of California are generally poorly represented on other Internet pages, and so I decided to show material in bits and pieces, depending how I make progress with imaging.


February 2026 • Version 12