Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum

ABOUT THIS PLACE

It opened in 1995 and is named for Frank P. Bailey and Annie Mead Matthews, whose sons gave eight acres of family land for it in 1989. The collection runs to roughly six hundred thousand specimens gathered from around the world, displayed alongside the Sanibel shells visitors have just been picking up off the beach. In 2020 the museum added the Living Gallery of Aquariums, holding more than three hundred animals of some sixty species, which turned it from a cabinet of empty shells into a place where the animals that made them are alive in front of you. Hurricane Ian flooded and wrecked the building on September 28, 2022. It was rebuilt and reopened in March 2024. Touch pools hold red abalone, California sea hares and lightning whelks under supervision. Aquarium keeper chats run at eleven in the morning and two in the afternoon, with a touch pool talk at 3:30. Allow two hours. For anyone shelling on Sanibel, an hour here first makes the beach legible