KARACHI Emergence of a quantity of white and yellow seashells all along the Clifton beach overnight gave a beautiful look to the shore and attracted visitors in large numbers on Thursday.

Hundreds of men, women and children were seen sorting out the shells to pick the most colourful and attractive ones from the collection, mostly bivalves.

According to scientists, the emergence of the huge stocks of seashells is a monsoon phenomenon. 

A former director-general of the National Institute of Oceanography and visiting faculty member of the University of Karachi, Dr Shahid Amjad, said that the phenomenon is witnessed when the high energy waves during the south-west monsoon dislodges the invertebrates from their original habitats near the shelf or to the sea coast. 

NIO director-general Dr Shaukat Hayat Khan said that a team of the institute had also visited the seashell washed ashore on Thursday and observed that the collection was a mix of dead and alive seashells, largely bivalves.