Best time to shell
Every low tide on a beach gets a score from 0 to 100. The good window opens an hour before the water is lowest and stays open for ninety minutes after. Eighty or higher is Excellent, 65 is Good, 45 is Fair, and anything lower is a morning you can happily skip.
- Tide
- Onshore wind
- Dawn
- Reputation
- Field reports
- Alerts
- 0–100
Tide
Lower water, better odds. A very low tide, at or below −0.15 m from mean lower low water, gets marked extreme.
Onshore wind
Wind blowing onto the beach in the hours before low tide gives the score a lift.
Dawn
A low within three hours of sunrise gets a small dawn bonus. Those are the pretty mornings.
Reputation
Famous shelling beaches get a bump. A poor or limited beach stays capped, so a great tide alone can’t call it Excellent.
Field reports
Notes from people on the sand can nudge the score. If the beach is being renourished, it comes down.
Alerts
Weather alerts take points off. A hurricane, tropical storm, tornado, or tsunami counts more than an ordinary warning.
Plenty of these shells turn up all year. Winter is the sweetest season for a fresh wash-up: cold fronts, and nor’easters on the Atlantic, push a new crop onto the sand. The score then picks which low tide that day is worth the walk.
Where in Florida
Nine coasts, both sides of the state. On the Gulf: the Panhandle, the Nature Coast, Tampa Bay, Southwest Florida, and the Keys. On the Atlantic: the First Coast, the Space Coast, the Treasure Coast, and the Gold Coast.
The beaches we love most are Sanibel Lighthouse Beach, Bowman’s Beach on Sanibel, and Boca Grande on Gasparilla Island. Close behind are Pensacola Beach, Naples Beach, Tigertail Beach on Marco Island, and Bahia Honda State Park. A busy spot like South Beach is a quieter shelling beach than the Gulf barrier islands. On Lee and Collier beaches, take empty shells only.
The 25,550 photos on the map are pictures we can share, each one with a place attached. A pin is where that photo was taken. It isn’t a promise the beach is shelling well today.