FLORIDA FEATURE ARTICLES : FORT MYERS / SANIBEL

Shell Seekers Treasures Along the Beaches of Fort Myers and Sanibel

More than 100 barrier and coastal islands snuggle up to the Lee County, Florida shoreline, home to 50 miles of sandy white beaches that shelter some of the best shelling in the United States. Tourists and residents alike search the beaches for Neptune’s treasures. Some don miner’s hats with lights, arising before sunrise to find the best specimens washed ashore. In 2005, 2 million visitors from around the world flocked to southwest Florida to sample this shelling paradise.

The beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel yield some 400 species of multi-colored seashells, from the commonplace scallop and clam to the exotic tulips, olives, fragile paper fig shells and the rarest of them all, the brown speckled junonia. Prime examples of these, and thousands more, are exhibited at the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum on Sanibel Island, the only shell museum in North America, where experts answer questions about rare shells from around the world.

“Peak shelling season in the Fort Myers/Sanibel area is May through September,” says Mike Fuery, a fishing and shelling charter captain on Captiva Island. “It’s possible to find 50 to 60 different kinds here on a given day.”

Shelling is actively pursued all along the southwest Florida coastline. It is especially good in less populated areas, like North Captiva and Cayo Costa islands, known for their starfish, conch and sand dollars.

Shell activists naturally seek to preserve this stellar natural resource and protect live shells from being over-harvested and endangered. By signature of the late Florida Governor Lawton Chiles, the City of Sanibel Island banned all live shelling as of January 1, 1995, and as of March 2002, the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, at the request of the Lee County’s Board of County Commissioners, also banned all live shelling throughout the Fort Myers/Sanibel area.

However, collection of uninhabited shells, ones where the animals or mollusks are already dead or gone from the shell, is unlimited and encouraged.

Serious shell seekers, and those in the know, shell around the low phase of the tide, when greater beach area is exposed. They start to scan less populated beaches an hour before low tide and work until an hour past the lowest tide point.

Where is the best place to walk on the beach? One of Fuery’s favorite spots is the shell line, just where the highest waves stop as they shush up onto the sand. This is where groups of shells arrive and are reshuffled by ongoing wave action. It saves digging.

Another good spot for great shells is at the slight drop in the surf line, just where gentle waves break before rolling onto the beach. While this area is accessible only when weather permits, it usually holds the most and finest specimens.

Above all, shelling requires patience. No one area is good all the time and no collection worth viewing was ever found on one outing. Yet there is something innately appealing about shelling that keeps most people coming back time after time, year after year. Morning, evening or midday, shell seekers throughout the islands and mainland coasts of The Beaches of Fort Myers & Sanibel assume the famous “Sanibel Stoop” or “Captiva Crouch,” position to gather ever more gifts from the sea.






Photo: Visit Florida

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