📖 At a glance
- Live sea stars
- Protected — cannot be taken in Collier & Lee
- Live sand dollars
- Also protected — same rule
- What you can keep
- Empty shells only
- If you find a live one
- Photograph it, then gently return it
- How to tell it's alive
- Soft, colored, moving tube feet; firm body
The rule, plainly
It's about as clear-cut as a beach rule gets. In Collier County (Marco Island, Naples) and neighboring Lee County, you may not take live shellfish, live sand dollars or live sea stars. That's it — if it's alive, it stays. The same law governs the keyhole sand dollars our shellers love and the conchs and whelks in the wrack line. The only things you're free to bring home are empty shells with no animal inside. Our full breakdown lives in the Collier County shelling rules, and the bigger-picture answer is in is it legal to take shells in Florida.
Why it matters (beyond the law)
A sea star isn't a decoration that happens to live in the ocean — it's an animal doing real work. Sea stars are predators that keep oyster bars and shell beds in balance, and they breathe through their skin and tube feet, so a few minutes in a hot bucket or a beach bag is fatal. A dried starfish on a shelf cost a living one its life. Leaving them in place keeps the shallows healthy, which keeps the whole show going: the bait, the fish, the dolphins and the wading birds we all come to see. Honestly, a sharp photo and a clear conscience beat a smelly souvenir every time.
What to do instead
When you spot a live sea star, here's the play: cup it under the water if you can, snap your photo quickly, and lower it back down on the spot. Don't dry it in the sun, don't pile it in a bucket, and don't try to "rescue" one onto your towel. The same goes for live sand dollars, which are fuzzy and brownish-purple when alive versus the clean white skeletons you can keep. If you want guaranteed treasure to take home, our shelling tours run to the islands where empty shells pile up faster than the crowds can find them.
| Find | Keep it? | Tell |
|---|---|---|
| Live sea star | No — return it | Soft, colored, moving |
| Live sand dollar | No — return it | Fuzzy, brown-purple, firm |
| White sand-dollar skeleton | Yes | Bleached, hard, empty |
| Empty shell | Yes | No animal inside |
From the Helm: Spotting a live sea star on Rookery Bay’s grass flats before anyone reaches for it
A kid at the rail spots it first almost every time — a five-armed shadow pressed flat against the turtle grass in ankle-deep water, easy to mistake for a rock until it moves. Our mates try to catch that moment before small hands go overboard, because a sea star out of water for more than a minute or two starts to struggle, and just a few minutes stranded in the sun can be fatal to it. The habit we’ve built is simple: point, admire, and only then decide together whether a closer look is worth a brief, careful lift.
You’ll almost never spot one out in open water — they’re animals of the shallow seagrass edges and the calmer flats tucked behind islands like the ones fringing Rookery Bay, where the bottom stays soft and undisturbed. A falling tide is when we see the most, since it pulls the water thin enough over the grass to expose exactly what’s sitting on the bottom without a mask or a net. That same falling water is why our captains slow down and idle those edges rather than run straight across them on the way to somewhere else.
If a guest wants to hold one, we coach two hands cupped flat underneath rather than fingers wrapped around an arm, since a sea star’s arms are more fragile than they look and a rough grip can tear one. We keep it in the water as much as possible, lift it just clear of the surface for a photo, and set it back exactly where it sat — not tossed from the rail, but lowered gently so it lands right-side up. The whole exchange, camera included, usually takes less time than deciding on the photo itself.
We also get asked more than you’d think whether a dried, sun-bleached find on the beach counts under the same rule — it doesn’t, since anything already dead and empty on the sand is fair to keep, same as an empty shell. The rule only ever protects the living animal still doing its job in the water. That distinction trips people up constantly, especially with sand dollars, since a live one still has that soft velvet fuzz and faint color, while an empty test is bone-white and hollow.
It’s part of why our wildlife stops move slower than guests sometimes expect — we’re not just pointing things out, we’re giving every animal we find the same few careful minutes before it goes back exactly where it was. On a good falling tide near the grass flats, that patience is usually rewarded with more than one sighting, though we never promise a sea star will show up on any particular trip. Pair that habit with a shelling stop down the beach and you’ve got the full rhythm of how we run that hour.