The 1985 staff of the United States Postal Service has my stamp of approval.

During that year, the first postal item celebrating shells was released. Of the five shells in the postage collection, there were bivalves and univalves, including different types of snails and a scallop, all found in North American waters. At the time, these first-class stamps cost 22 cents and could take your mail anywhere in the country. It is impossible to resist calling this postal pack, snail mail.

A special observance, called a First Day ceremony, celebrating this oceanic assortment was held at Harvard University. Coincidentally or not, it occurred on the 75th anniversary of the Boston Malacological Club, whose charter is to “promote the study of land, freshwater and marine mollusks, related creatures and their environments.”

One of the stamps in the collection featured a snail called the New England Neptune. It was a good decade for this species. Besides being on its own stamp, this large snail, also called a wrinkled whelk, lyre whelk, ribbed Neptune, lyre Neptune and inflated whelk, became the state shell of Massachusetts two years later. This designation continues today.

The New England Neptune lives offshore, so its shell is not often found on beaches. The shell with its inhabitant is more likely to be seen by those in the fishing industry, especially lobster harvesters and other fishers, in their pots and nets as bycatch.

David Stanwood can attest that occasionally these specimens do find their way to dry ground. David is a well-known piano tuner who plies his trade on and off-Island and recently shared a sighting (and acquisition) of a shell of this species.

While tuning a piano in the home of a Woods Hole scientist, he observed a rack of shells obtained by the researcher and homeowner during a deep-water research project. Noticing a bunch of beautiful specimens, which David had never seen before, he asked for and received from the owner one of the many New England Neptunes displayed and subsequently shared its photo with me last week.

It was an unfamiliar shell, so of course it piqued my interest. Neptunea lyrata is a gastropod — a taxonomic class that includes slugs and snails and is further classified in the scientific family (Buccinidae) of large snails or whelks. 

This variety was first described in literature in 1791 by German malacologist Johann Friedrich Gmelin. An apostle of Linnaeus, his thesis, titled “The irritability of vegetables, investigated in each part of the plant and confirmed by further experiments,” might make for an interesting read, though the attention-grabbing title might have resulted from a faulty translation, rather than a petulant potato or cantankerous cauliflower. In those days, scientists studied many things and Gmelin also had expertise in plants, insects and reptiles.

Like Gmelin, David doesn’t just stick to one organism. I never know what his next find will be, though I always look forward to hearing from him. He can add the New England Neptune to his collection even if it won’t appreciate as much as the stamp with its likeness. However, they both can remind us to take a whelk on the wild side.

Suzan Bellincampi is director of the Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary in Edgartown, and author of Martha’s Vineyard: A Field Guide to Island Nature and The Nature of Martha’s Vineyard.