Mollusks in Action and Trails & Tales of Living Seashells are well-researched and wonderfully produced videos that can be enjoyed by members of a large audience, including mollusk students, naturalists, and curious beachcombers.

Mollusks in Action is an excellent visual introduction to mollusks. Its exceptional photography brings alive the subject better than any text could. Throughout the DVD, the viewers are brought closer to these animals than they might be on the beach.

Ms. Matthys’ second DVD, Trails & Tales of Living Seashells is the next best thing to taking a walk on the beach and through tide pools. You learn to see the beach in new light and with new eyes, and you learn that the smallest bump or trail can mean there is an animal living beneath the sand. The DVD is especially helpful in showing how these creatures appear in their natural habitat. Gently, each invertebrate creature is uncovered and the details of how it feeds or protects itself are shown.

The Denver Museum of Nature and Science used selections from these videos in conjunction with a display of shells from our Conchology Collection. Visitors could see how the live animal was positioned in the shell, moved the shell, and used the shell for protection. They were able to closely examine the eyes, the proboscis and foot and see how the carnivorous snails eat their prey. It helped visitors to recognize that the beautiful shells on display were created by creatures even more interesting and beautiful when they were alive. Copies of the DVD’s sold out in the Museum’s Gift Store. These DVD’s are invaluable aids for any classroom teacher preparing to teach about the marine creatures found on beaches and tide pools.

Florida’s Sanibel Island is rightly famous for its shells, but few of us know anything about the amazing life styles of the soft-bodied animals that created them. These informative videos show that studying living mollusks may be more rewarding than merely picking up their shells.

As a novice shell lover, I enjoy the shape, texture and color of an inanimate object. This video helps one appreciate a seashell as a moving, breathing, living part of the ocean’s beauty and complexity. It teaches a lot in a little time.

My fourth grade students were thoroughly engaged in the video, Trails & Tales of Living Seashells. After viewing the video, they asked many critical thinking type questions. Part of our fourth grade curriculum at Notre Dame Academy includes a unit of inquiry on animal habitats. This unit focuses on a student inquiry into the survival of ecosystems, the role of producers and consumers, and factors that affect the survival or extinction of organisms such as adaptation, variation of behaviors, and external features. This video served as a very valuable resource to help enhance this particular unit of inquiry on ecosystems as we investigate various ecosystems to explore how different organisms satisfy their needs within their environments.

I have shown Mollusks in Action to students of all ages before I retired and now as a middle school science class volunteer. All have been fascinated with the videos. I use the films in a number of ways. Because the films captured their interests, the students asked many questions about shells and learned research skills in determining the answers to their questions. In one case the students needed to study seashells from a physics point of view so we had a wonderful time with Mollusks in Action. As the students watched the film, they were asked to choose two mollusks and tell how each performed a certain function. Then they were asked to choose two manmade items that worked in a similar fashion. They came up with many interesting ideas including door hinges (bivalves); screws, spiral staircases and water slides (central comuella of snails) and a backhoe (the digging foot of the lettered olive). In addition to science, we used the film as a basis for writing scientific articles as well as creative writing stories.

Incredible photography. Entertaining as well as educational. Easy for beginners to comprehend but includes scientific vocabulary for those ready to stretch in their learning. Suitable for all ages.