About BeachNut

I’m Justin, and BeachNut comes out of a Florida childhood. I grew up here, moved to Alabama at fourteen, and just about every trip back since has been for the beach.

Before I could drive, the closest thing I had to a shoreline was a driveway made of crushed shell and rock. I’d spend hours out there on my hands and knees, sorting through it for whole shells, shark teeth and broken pieces of coral. It sounds like a strange way to spend an afternoon, and it was, but it taught me how to look — how to pick one shape out of a thousand.

The real thing was better. Getting to the coast and finding shells still wet from the tide, arriving fresh instead of tumbled to pieces, felt like being handed something. I snorkeled when I could and walked when I couldn’t, and I’d happily lose an entire day to a mile of sand, eyes down the whole time.

What I never had was any way to know whether a morning was worth getting up for, or what I was actually holding. Tide charts told me one piece of it. Field guides told me another, if I could find the right page. Nothing put the two together.

That’s BeachNut. It scores Florida beaches every day from tides, weather and conditions so you know where and when to go. It identifies what you find from a photo — shells, shark teeth, fossils, sea glass, sea beans, beach pottery — and saves it to a collection with the place and date attached, so five years from now you still know where that one came from. Beach maps, day planning, a free field guide and guides and articles fill in the rest. Florida is where it starts — it’s home, and it’s the coast I know best — and we’re working our way outward across the rest of the U.S. coast.

One thing matters as much as the finding: the beach has to still be worth walking next year. BeachNut surfaces live-shell rules, protected species and park regulations before you pocket something you shouldn’t. Leave living things where they are, and take the empty shells with a clear conscience.