Posted on June 11, 2025
PANAMA CITY, Fla. – For months, Mexico Beach has been hard at work with its beach restoration project, which pumped about a million cubic yards of sand onto the beach, lengthening the shoreline by one hundred fifty feet.
“The beach restoration project is something that is going to give the upland structures protection from future storms and erosion,” explains Kimberly Shoaf, the President of the Mexico Beach Community Development Council.
Now, the project is finished, leaving behind nearly 14.5 tons of seashells.
“For part of the project, we used a shell extractor,” said Shoaf.“Part of that process was extracting any additional things that could be found in the sand, including shells.”
In early June, the city invited the public to sift through the shell pile, located at the local boat ramp.
” We had close to four to five hundred people a day for two days,” said Mark Steele, the public works director for Mexico Beach. “We estimate about 1,000 people taking five-gallon buckets of shells each, and it did not dent it very much. We are planning on additional days to come in the near future.”
The shells that aren’t collected will be utilized for other purposes.
“Whatever shells are not handed out to collectors or residents are being re-purposed for city usage to help with parking lots and stormwater drainage,” adds Steele. “The shells are going to good use, we plan on using as much as we can.
City leaders said the next shell collection day should be around the Fourth of July, but that date has not officially been set.
