Walking the beach hunting shells has long been a favorite thing of beach goers everywhere probably since the first humans walked upright on a beach. Even if you just leave them in a pile on the beach somewhere, it’s still fun to walk slowly at the water’s edge looking for that “perfect” shell.
Unfortunately, even with so much beauty around Cocoa Beach, our shells aren’t something we’re exactly known for. You may find one whole occasionally, but most of what you see are broken fragments
Why is this you may ask. One of the things you may notice about Cocoa Beach is that the beach has a large, flat, sandy area from the dunes all the way out to the high tide area, where it drops off quickly to harder sand that stays wet a good bit except at dead low tide. The reason is because that big sandy area is sand that was brought in after Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Irma in 2017. A lot of the beach was washed out, so 3 large dredges were brought in last year before turtle season, and a lot of sand pumped ashore. This is something that happens every few years, so in 2018 it was needed again.
So most of the shells you see are ones that were sucked up from a few miles offshore, where they travel through a pipe up to the dredge. They are then blown from about a mile offshore through another pipe and then up to another mile down the beach where they are slammed into a large cage and scattered, before being pushed around by bulldozers. So the likelihood of a shell making it through all of this unharmed is unfortunately pretty low.
Fortunately there are a lot of other great things to do here on the Space Coast of Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral. If you’re ready to book your stay, and don’t mind not finding pretty shells, be sure to check the calendar and book your stay at Driftwood Cocoa Beach!
