Beached on the Southshore sandspit between the Pacific Ocean and the Avon Heathcote Estuary on the South Island of New Zealand, a lone clamshell gleams in the late afternoon sun. Was it eaten by a seal for a meal? Or cracked open by a scavenging seagull and deposited here? The Māori were the first settlers to this area, now a coastal suburb of Christchurch. Their name for the sandspits means 'the chattering of the seagulls'. The dark sands collected along the shoreline between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago by longshore drift traveled by tides, currents, and storms southward from the mouth of the Waimakariri River.

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