We’d just gotten to the island after a hectic few weeks of moving the boat south. It seemed like every calamity had happened and the weather had been consistently bad. We needed time on the beach with no adventures. We decided to go out to west airport beach as someone had said the shelling was great there right now as there had been some high tides.

Sure enough we were soon doing the Sanibel stoop grabbing fighting conch after fighting conch. Usually they are pale in color and roughened up but these were dark and shiny. We laughed at the ocean’s fickle bounty as different days bring different shells.

Sometimes we have found many olive shells, other times sand dollars, once we spent a day collecting angel wing after angel wing. We made altars with our shells, took a few and left the rest for others to find.

The Bailley-Mathews Shelling museum has a fine online shell identification guide at http://www.shellmuseum.org/ and then select SWFL Shells tab.

Louise and Skye looking over ocean bounty at Cayo Costa

When shelling remember the following:

• Sand dollars are purple when alive: throw them back.
• Mild bleach solution can clean the shells and stop smell.
• You can reinforce sand dollars by brushing on them white glue mixed with a bit of water.
• If you've bent over for some time, stand and lean back to realign your spine.

Sometimes you find an uneaten desiccated fish that looks like some prehistoric fossil.

Here is a florida conch with its operculum or "door" still intact. We throw these back in the surf or bury them hoping they will survive. Florida law does allow one live shell a day.

Prize shells and urchin skeletons cleaned and drying.

The island is under constant erosion and rebuilding. The west side is eroding and the east side or the sound is filling in. This palm will eventually break apart in the surf.

This is a shell heap. Louise found a scotch bonnet in one of these.

Sorting a good day of shelling while camping at Cayo Costa.

Oysters.

The Tropic Star takes you from Pin eland Marina to Cayo Costa State Park.

Out across to the East from the fish house at Safety Harbor are these vast shallow grass and mudflats that are exposed during low tide. These raeas are natural wonders of grass flats tidepooling.

This is looking to the West now at the fish house behind me. This house is made of Cypress wood a local wood that is weather proof and glavanized tin. Many years ago, fisherman dropped their fish off here to be picked up by another boat making the rounds of these various drop offs in Pine Island Sound.