The History
The Shell Shop originally started as a “lemonade style” stand where young entrepreneur, David Thomas, who was only 10 years old, sold abalone shells in the summer. After that first successful summer, David’s father, Lawrence Thomas, offered to build David a small building for selling his shells. While David was selling shells, Lawrence Thomas was a commercial albacore fisherman. He also fished for shrimp in 90-100 fathoms, which was incredibly deep for the time. While dragging in such deep water, Lawrence would sometimes find rare shells and sea life, which increased the Thomas family’s interest in sea life and shells.
Young David Thomas
Inside of the Shel Shop in the early days
During the “off season” of fishing, Lawrence Thomas was a salvage diver with partners Ernie Porter and Dean Tyler. They obtained a special permit to salvage dive the Point Honda Navy disaster site. The goal was to salvage the huge brass valves and piping to sell as scrap metal. One of the interesting items they kept from this wreckage is the anchor displayed outside The Shell Shop. This anchor was from The USS Chauncey and weighs 1 ton! They also recovered the ships’ bells off of the USS Delphy and The USS Young, the latter of which is now displayed at The Morro Bay Maritime Museum.
The team of salvage workers had abundant challenges in overcoming the forces of nature in the ocean and the technicalities of bringing these massive items to land. Overall, they salvaged about 100 tons of scrap brass from the destroyer wreckage. An interesting read about this disaster is Tragedy at Honda by Lockwood and Adamson.
Another area this team salvaged was Jade Cove just North of us, off of Highway One. They brought up massive boulders of Jade to sell to collectors at The Shell Shop, some weighing hundreds of pounds.
The USS Chauncey anchor
Laurence Thomas with recovered brass from shipwrecks
Massive boulders of jade from diving Jade Cove
David Thomas' shell collecting took him to Easter Island where he met a Maoi