Last year, wildlife photographer Brianna Varner and her boyfriend paid a visit to Florida’s Pass-a-Grille Beach. The area had recently experienced some rough weather, which meant there might be something interesting washed up on shore.
As Varner dug through the debris scattered over the sand, she noticed what she thought was a leaf. But when she picked it up, she felt like there was something strange about it.
Brianna Varner
“I was just kind of staring at it, and I was like, ‘This is kind of weirdly shaped,’” Varner told The Dodo.
As she kept staring at the “leaf,” she slowly realized it was actually a mermaid’s purse. Mermaid’s purses are the common name for the casings that surround shark, stingray and skate eggs. Mothers deposit mermaid’s purses underwater and anchor them to something on the ocean floor to keep them secure until the embryos are ready to hatch.
Varner wasn’t expecting the mermaid’s purse to actually contain an embryo — typically, when people find the egg cases on the beach, they’ve already hatched. But as she held it in her hand, she noticed it had a rounded shape and was sealed at the ends. So she decided to shine some light through it to see if there was anything inside.
“As soon as we held it up to the sun, we noticed that there was a little embryo in it,” Varner said.
Brianna Varner
Varner knew the embryo wouldn’t make it if its case was left to dry out on the beach. So she carefully tucked it in under the rocks in a tide pool to give it a chance to survive.
As Varner kept exploring the beach, she found six or seven more mermaid’s purses. Each time she found one, she placed it in a tide pool.
The very last mermaid’s purse Varner picked up felt different. At first, she wasn’t quite sure why.
“The other ones kind of felt a little bit more leathery and like they had some give to them … but this one was really hard,” Varner said. “And then when we went to hold it up to the light like we had with the others, no light would get through.”
As Varner was carrying this embryo to the water, she started to feel it move. She realized then that the embryo was further along in its development than the others — but she didn’t know quite how far.
“All of a sudden, I look down and a little mouth is looking at me,” Varner said. “And it was so jarring at first, because I was like, ‘What am I even looking at?’”
As Varner tried to wrap her mind around what was happening, a baby started to emerge from the egg case. Within seconds, the tiny animal had fully come out and was ready to start swimming. There were some rough waves close to the shore, so Varner decided to carry the baby out into deeper water before letting go.
Brianna Varner
“[I]t just immediately dropped to the sand, which is exactly what its instincts would be telling it to do,” Varner said. “It was a really cool moment where I was like, ‘Oh my God. I think it’ll be OK.’”
Varner’s experience with the mermaid’s purse serves as a great reminder to not destroy or throw away things you don’t recognize when you’re at the beach.
“There’s a lot of things that are on beaches that we don’t realize are alive or important,” Varner said.
After some research, Varner determined that the baby who’d hatched in her hand was a clearnose skate. She was honored to have witnessed the skate’s first few minutes of life, and she kept the empty mermaid’s purse as a memento of the unforgettable moment.
To keep up with Varner and see more of her ocean discoveries, you can follow her on TikTok or Instagram. 
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