ShellSanibel
Read the beach.
Responsible shelling
One rule does most of the work: if the animal is still in it, it is not yours to take. Everything below is how to tell.
Taking live shells is prohibited in Lee County
That includes anything with the animal still in it, and sand dollars, sea stars and urchins whether or not they look alive. If it moves, if it closes, if it is anchored to the sand — put it back where you found it, the right way up.
A shell with an animal in it is not a souvenir that has been left out. It is the animal’s house, and the beach is not producing spares.
We link the ordinance itself as soon as we have the authoritative page for it rather than paraphrasing a law from memory. Until then: the prohibition covers live shelling throughout Lee County, and the City of Sanibel is the authority to check before you rely on any detail here.
How to tell whether it is alive
- Snails — whelks, conchs, olives, tulips, cones
- A live one is heavy for its size and sealed. Many carry a hard or leathery operculum like a trapdoor across the opening; look for the animal’s flesh just inside. An empty shell is noticeably lighter and dry within.
- Bivalves — coquina, venus clams, scallops, jingles
- Two halves still hinged together and closed means the animal is inside and alive. A single loose valve is empty. Coquina in the swash are alive almost without exception — watch them burrow back down after a wave.
- Sand dollars and sea urchins
- A live sand dollar is brown, grey or purplish and covered in fine spines that move. A dead one is white, bare and brittle. Brown means alive. This is the animal most often taken by mistake here.
- Sea stars
- Assume any sea star you find is alive. They can be limp and still living, and out of water they are dying, not resting.
If you are not sure
Put it back. Not on the dry sand — back in the wet, the right way up, where you found it. A shell returned unnecessarily costs you nothing. A living animal carried up the beach in a bag dies slowly, and so does whatever was going to eat it.
The things worth doing beyond the rule
- Take a few, not a bagful. The beach is not producing spares, and the shells left in the wash are what makes the next person’s morning.
- Leave the wrack line where it is. That tangle of weed and shell fragment is habitat and it is what holds the beach together in a blow.
- Give nesting and roosting birds room. Between spring and late summer there are posted areas; walk below them and around them, not through.
- Do not dig live animals out of the sand to look at them, and do not take a shell because the animal in it looks nearly dead. It usually is not.