As a small child, my parents owned a huge conch shell display (surrounded by various smaller shells & a couple plastic palm trees, cemented together & lit up with an electric "nite" lightbulb) under our old rabbit-earred TV set.
I loved looking at that display & wondered about the oceans & warm places where all those shell creatures had once lived. (We have plentiful lakes, but I knew those critters did not live there).
Years later, my husband & I began taking trips to the coast & I collected an assortment of washed up shells to bring home (land locked US). After that, we began snorkeling on the coast & more recently, diving. This is when I finally saw the critters that lived in those shells first hand - decorator crabs, hermits, queen conchs, mussels, live sea horses . . In 2015, we saw this guy (photo), a live sand dollar (?) which we'd only seen before in collections for sale - white & dead. Wow.
I have our various washed-up shells displayed in our bathrooms & around the house in small pint/quart sized, clear, covered jars. They are a tie-in with my parents (now gone, as is the old nite-lite conch display) who inadvertently provided me with a curiousiness for the sea.
And the shells we've collected remind me during our loooong, cold winters - It's time to plan another warm water dive trip!