Beachcombing is one of the easiest ways there is to unwind. You walk the shoreline at your own pace while the news, the TV and the computer stay at home, and the steps add up without you counting them. An hour of looking down at the sand can take the edge off a stressful week.
Best of all, you usually come home with something to show for it. Whether you walk along an ocean shore or a freshwater body like the Great Lakes, there are beautiful finds waiting at the water's edge: a few rocks or shells for a shelf or windowsill, or a vase that fills up a little more with every trip.
What can you find beachcombing?
When you walk a shoreline, you never know what you'll find. Basically, anything the water left behind is there for you to explore. Most beachcombers collect one or more of these:
- Seashells: whelks, scallops, cockles, olives, sand dollars and hundreds of others, depending on the coast.
- Sea glass: broken bottles and tableware that waves have tumbled smooth and frosted over decades.
- Rocks and fossils: agates, jasper, Petoskey stones, fossil coral and shark teeth.
- Driftwood and curiosities: floats, pottery shards and old bottle stoppers.
- Lost metal: coins and jewelry, which is where a detector comes in.
When to go beachcombing
The finds get better when you time it right. Skip the open sand and walk the wrack line (the trail of deposits left behind by high tide), because that's where the water drops shells, sea glass and good rocks. Here are five tips for timing your walk:
- Go on a falling tide. Arrive one to two hours before low tide and follow the water out. You'll see ground nobody has walked yet, and wet finds show their color.
- Watch for the lowest tides of the month. Tide tables mark some lows with a minus sign. Those expose bars and gravel beds that stay underwater the rest of the month.
- Go after a storm. Heavy surf digs up material from deeper water and throws it high on the beach. Wait until conditions are safe, then be on the first low tide.
- Go early. Beachcombing is first come, first served. A popular beach is picked over by mid-morning.
- Go in the off season. Fall through early spring brings more storms and fewer people. Many towns also rake their beaches in summer, and raking removes everything you came for.
On the Great Lakes there is no tide worth planning around. Plan around wind instead: a day or two of strong onshore wind and waves does the same work a storm tide does on the coast.
Where to look: reading the beach
Water sorts what it carries by weight and shape. Once you see the sorting, you stop wandering and start working the right strips.
- The wrack line. This is the ribbon of seaweed, reeds and debris left at the last high tide. Light shells, sea glass and driftwood ride up with it. Turn the weed over, because the good pieces sit underneath.
- Shell and pebble lines. Lower on the beach you will see bands of crushed shell or gravel running parallel to the water. Heavy items settle with material of their own size, so a pebble band holds the sea glass and the rocks.
- The wash zone. The last few feet where waves run up and pull back keeps turning over new material. Stand still and watch a few waves before you move.
- Obstacles. Jetties, rock outcrops, points and creek mouths interrupt the current and trap what it carries. Check the up-current side first.
- Dips and cuts. After a storm, look for places where sand has been stripped away to gravel or hardpan. Older material is exposed there.
Stay off the dunes. They protect the land behind them, and many are closed by law.
How to find seashells
The best shelling beaches slope gently and sit near inlets, passes and sandbars, where currents slow down and drop their load. Walk the shell lines at low tide, and wade the first trough of water if conditions are calm, because whole shells often sit just past the dry sand where fewer people look.
A long-handle sand scoop earns its place here. Push it through a shell line, shake it in the water, and the sand drains away while the shells stay in the basket. You cover a lot of ground without bending once.
Before a shell goes in the bag, check that nothing lives in it:
- Snail-type shells: look into the opening. If you see flesh, or a hard round door sealing the opening, it is alive. Put it back in the water.
- Hermit crabs: a shell that feels heavy for its size, or that has legs tucked inside, is occupied. Leave it.
- Clams and scallops: two halves held tightly shut mean a living animal.
- Sand dollars: a live one is dark, usually brown or purple, with a velvety coat of tiny moving spines. A dead one is pale, bare and smooth.
- Starfish and urchins: assume they are alive unless they are dry, stiff and far above the tide line.
How to find sea glass
Sea glass comes from people, so the best sea glass beaches are not the wild, pretty ones. Look near old harbors, fishing wharfs, ferry landings, boardwalk towns, former glass factories and old shoreline dumps. Glass thrown in the water there a lifetime ago is what washes up now.
The beach itself matters as much as the history:
- Pick rock and pebble over pure sand. Gravel tumbles glass smooth and then traps it. Fine sand buries it.
- Search pebbles that match the size of the glass you want. Water sorts by size, so thumbnail glass sits in thumbnail gravel.
- Skip groomed beaches. Resort beaches that get raked in season rarely hold glass.
- Look when the stones are wet. Wet glass shows color against wet rock, and frosted glass goes pale and chalky when it dries.
Genuine sea glass has a frosted, pitted surface, rounded edges and tiny crescent-shaped marks you can see under a magnifier. A piece that is still shiny with sharp edges has not been in the water long enough. Many collectors throw those back to finish.
Color tells you how lucky you got. White, brown and green are the common ones because that is what most bottles were made from. Soft aqua, cobalt blue and lavender turn up less often. Red, orange, yellow and turquoise are the rare finds.
On the Great Lakes the same thing is called beach glass. Freshwater is gentler on glass than saltwater, so lake pieces tend to be a little less frosted.
How to find beach rocks and fossils
Dry beach stones all look gray. Water brings out color and pattern, so hunt the wet strip at the waterline or carry a spray bottle for the dry gravel higher up.
- Agates: look for a waxy glow and for light passing through the stone when you hold it toward the sun. Banding confirms it.
- Petoskey stones: this fossil coral from northern Michigan shows a tight honeycomb of six-sided cells, each with a dark center. Dry, it passes for plain limestone. Wet, the pattern jumps out.
- Jasper and quartz: jasper is opaque and usually brick red, mustard or green. Quartz pebbles are milky to clear and feel glassy.
- Fossils: look for repeating patterns that nature rarely makes by accident, such as rings, ribs, segments and honeycombs.
- Shark teeth: on parts of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, look in the shell hash for small, glossy, dark triangles.
Remember, rocks are heavy and they hide in gravel bars, which is hard ground to dig by hand. A compact shovel or hand digger turns over cobble quickly, and it frees a half-buried stone without roughing up your fingers.
Beachcombing tools worth carrying
You can beachcomb with a bucket and bare hands. But after an hour of bending, most people want something better. Here is what our team recommends:
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A sand scoop. This is the tool that changes the day. A sand scoop is a perforated basket, on a short grip or a long handle, that lets sand and water fall through while solid objects stay put. It was built for beach metal detecting and it works just as well for shells and rocks.
- Long handle or hand scoop. A long handle lets you work standing up and reach into the wash. A hand scoop is lighter, cheaper and better for kids or for kneeling over a gravel patch. The Dune Scoops 24 in long-handle scoop and the Dune Scoops 6x9 hand scoop are the pair we would start with.
- Hole size. This decides what you keep. Detecting scoops are made to hold coins and rings, with holes around 3/8 to 5/8 in. That is right for shells and rocks. Small sea glass and tiny shells will fall through.
- Material. Stainless steel and titanium shrug off saltwater. Galvanized steel costs less and holds up well if you rinse it. Plastic is the lightest and cannot rust, but it is for loose dry sand only.
- A classifier for the small stuff. A classifier is a sifting screen from the gold prospecting world, and it solves the hole-size problem. Dump a scoop of gravel into it, dunk it in the water, and the sand washes out while the small glass and shells stay on the mesh. The Minelab PRO-GOLD classifier has 1/2 in mesh and sits on a 5 gallon bucket. Finer screens are available for micro shells.
- A mesh pouch. Wet finds in a solid bag turn into a sack of sandy water. A finds pouch with a mesh bottom, such as the Garrett All Terrain Dig Pouch, drains as you walk and rinses your finds every time you wade.
- The small things. Bring a tide app, water shoes, a spray bottle for rocks, and a hard container for anything fragile. Sand dollars and thin shells do not survive a bag of rocks.
- A metal detector, if the bug bites. The same wrack lines and low-tide troughs that collect shells also collect coins and jewelry. If you already walk the beach with a scoop, adding a waterproof metal detector and a pinpointer is a small step. Wet salt sand is hard on basic machines, so ask us before you buy if the ocean is your main ground.
Remember to rinse everything in fresh water when you get home. Salt eats hinges, zippers and cheap steel.
Rules: what you can legally take
The rule that applies almost everywhere is simple: take only what is empty and dead. Past that, the details change by state, county and park, so check the specific beach before you fill your bucket. When in doubt, ask your local parks department.
- Florida. Empty shells are fine on most public beaches. Taking a shell with a living animal in it requires a recreational saltwater fishing license, even from shore. Lee County, which includes Sanibel, bans taking live shells outright apart from a few clams and oysters. Manatee County allows two per species. Live queen conch is off limits statewide.
- Michigan. On state land and Great Lakes shoreline you may keep 25 lbs of rocks, minerals and fossils per person per year. That is a yearly total across every trip, not a daily limit. Collecting is prohibited at Sleeping Bear Dunes and Pictured Rocks national lakeshores.
- National parks and seashores. Federal parks generally prohibit removing natural objects. Some national seashores make an exception for a small amount of empty shells. Read the park's own rules page.
- State and local parks. Many state parks and nature preserves ban collecting completely, including on beaches where the next town over allows it.
- Private beaches. You will need the owner's permission.
- Digging. Digging has its own rules. Some beaches allow hand tools and some do not, and everyone expects you to fill your holes.
Beyond the law, be considerate. Take a few good pieces and leave the rest. Empty shells become homes for hermit crabs and break down into the sand itself. If you see trash, pick it up. That is how beachcombers keep their good reputation as stewards of the shoreline.
How to clean seashells, sea glass and rocks
Seashells. Soak them in fresh water for a day or two and scrub with an old toothbrush. For algae, barnacles or a lingering smell, soak in a mix of half water and half household bleach, check every few minutes, and pull them as soon as the coating lifts. Bleach left too long fades color and makes thin shells brittle. Rinse well, dry in the shade, and rub in a drop of mineral oil to bring back the shine.
Sea glass. Use warm water, dish soap and a soft brush, nothing more. Oil makes glass look wet and bright in a jar, but it hides the frost that proves the piece is real. Leave it off anything you plan to sell or trade.
Rocks. Scrub with soap and water. A thin coat of mineral oil gives a wet look for display. For a permanent polish you will need a rock tumbler, or wet sandpaper and patience for soft stones like Petoskeys.
