Jen and Carolyn,

My wife and I spent our honeymoon in the OB in April of '98. We took a local
charter service to Portsmouth Island that carries 4WD ATV's along to travel
the Island. The owner/guide has a planned tour that incorporates some
shelling areas, but all we found were beached shells; enormous Oliva sayana
being the best of these. I think that he will negotiate a shelling -only
adventure for a price. His wife told me on the phone when we made
reservations that they had found live Cassis there earlier that year. Be
sure to go to Ocracoke Island as well. There is an entire chapter devoted to
Ocracoke in The Art of Shelling by Chuck and Debbie Robinson (ISBN
0-9647267-6-9). We did not find any live specimens there, but we only had
enough time to investigate the NE end of the island. We found many Phalium
granulatum in good condition.There were some promising looking areas on the
Pamlico Sound side of Hatteras Island that we noticed while driving by. We
did find some excellent live-collected specimens at Newman's Shell Shop in
Nag's Head. There is contact information for the North Carolina Shell Club
on COA's website that you could try for additional information.
The OB is the most beautiful part of the US that I have yet experienced. Buy
a copy of The Insider's Guide to the Outer Banks and take it with you
everywhere you go. The Portsmouth Island charter service and everything else
is thoroughly covered in it. The natives are delightfully friendly and they
take seafood to a new dimension. The only problem is that you will not want
to leave. We were both near tears as we sat down on the flight home.

Best regards,

Steve