The taking of live shells is prohibited in Lee County and at least strictly controlled in the other two. Be sure to check locally before you load up with live shells.
Frankly, cleaning and preparing live univalve shells is a laborious process, involving:
- boiling the living animal in the shell
- extracting the dead animal with (usually) a dental pick
- discarding the animal bits
- brushing off algae, barnacles, and other stuff from the shell
It will take the better part of an evening. And, after all that, the shell may still stink if you leave the slightest bit of the animal inside the shell. The shell shop alternative will look a lot more cost effective after all that….
Echinoderms such as starfish and sand dollars are included in the prohibition.
The prohibition also means if you are caught even with an obviously dead shellfish with meat (however stinky it might be) still in it, you may be subject to a fine anyway.
The prohibition extends to shells occupied by hermit crabs, too. Sometimes these critters will withdraw ‘way back into the shell and not be visible. Your only clue might be that the shell feels a bit heavy.
Check your stash of supposedly dead shells before you leave the beach. By that time, the hermit crab might have poked his head out to see what was happening. Put him in the nearest water. Later on, you might even find one crawling around your room, carrying that shell you thought was empty. He’s OK. Don’t put him in tap water. Soak some toilet tissue in water, put it and the hermit crab in a dry bucket, and take him to the beach in the morning and turn him loose.
If you were on Sanibel 20 years ago and see the comparative scarcity of shells now, you will understand the reason for the prohibition against the taking of live shells.
Even so, you may pick up dead shells and there usually are plenty of them. Here are a few tips:
- All shells will stink at least a little, even the dead ones. Soak the ones you pick up in a weak bleach solution overnight, then rinse them in cold water and dry them out.
- When you pack them to go home, put them in a plastic bag, isolated from your clothes. Consider shipping them to yourself if you have a lot of them. The extra bag charge the airlines have come up with is often more than the shipping charges.
Univalve shells (one shell with one opening… ” snail” shells) may be stranded above the tide mark. Some are still alive, most are dead, or soon will be.
- The birds and sand crabs will eat most of the meat but can’t always get that last little bit. It is difficult to believe just how bad an eighth of an inch of mollusk can stink until you actually experience it. You can try soaking them in a strong bleach solution overnight, but it will likely be a lost cause.
- If you have the time, skip the bleach and put the shell where the ants can get at it. When they’re through, which might take a day or two (or whenever there are no more ants, whichever comes last), soak the shell in a mild bleach solution, rinse and dry as above.
- Do not throw live shells back into the water. The concussion caused by hitting the water will likely kill them. Take the time to wade out past where the waves are breaking against the shore and place them in the water. Or, leave them on the beach where they will be somebody’s dinner. They won’t go to waste.
Just leave the starfish alone. You would need to treat them with formaldehyde, a fairly dangerous chemical albeit available at some pharmacies, arrange the arms, and let them dry. If caught with them, the shell police may assume you caught them alive.
Don’t even start to think you can let these things dry on their own without the formaldehyde. To say they will stink is to understate….
Buy them at a shell shop.
Sea urchins will lose their spines as they dry out. The inside of the attractive remaining shell will have sand in it which needs to be shaken out if you want to try to keep it. That remaining paper-thin shell is very fragile and unlikely to make it to your home intact. You can try spraying it with clear, flat urethane lacquer inside and out, but it might not work and is a lot of trouble. Shell shops sometimes have them and these will be treated to harden them.
I really don’t have to tell you to handle these things carefully, do I? I mean look at the spines. If you break one off in you, you need to get it out pronto; seek medical help if it’s bad, as they can cause infection.
Dead sand dollars will be white, live ones will be mostly brown or purple-ish and feel rough to the touch (I don’t know why the one in the link is blue. Pretend it is brown).
They can be up to eight inches or so in diameter. Be nice and put the live ones back in the water. As for the dead ones (and it is unusual to find a whole one), soak them over night in cold fresh water. This will strengthen the shell (which is what you have– the calcium carbonate internal framework of the live animal). Dry them out, and then spray them on both sides with several thin coats of clear, flat urethane lacquer for good measure.
Be careful eating shellfish (for our purposes here, this includes shrimp, too) anyplace other than a restaurant, from a reputable grocer, or reputable fish shop. There are many places down here that are off limits for shell fishing because of contaminants in the water and even more of them on the east coast.
Some folks aren’t so careful as to their source of supply, so you be careful.
- Cooking shellfish, as opposed to consuming them raw, reduces your chances of getting sick. Oysters are a good example, but not the only one.
- Fish poisoning is also a concern, not just in Florida, pretty much everywhere.
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