Cedar Key City Beach

Shelling at Cedar Key City Beach

• Cedar Key's public beach is a small, sheltered strip of sand in City Park on 2nd Street, next to the playground, with restrooms and a buoyed swimming area.
• The water is shallow and calm and the bottom turns muddy farther out, so wear beach shoes.
• Use the tide times on this page (NOAA's Cedar Key station): the tide range is large here, and shallow water can turn to mudflat within a couple of hours.
• Sand has been trucked in to this beach, so search the waterline and the freshest wrack line rather than the dry upper sand.
• Cedar Key is a hard-clam farming center: offshore lease areas are marked with posts or buoys, and wild shellfish can't be taken from a lease or within 25 feet of one. Leave any shell with a living animal inside. Under FWC rules, taking one needs a Florida recreational saltwater fishing license, even from shore, unless you're exempt (exemptions include children under 16 and Florida residents 65 or older). A license doesn't override closed areas or species limits, such as the clam-lease rule. Check FWC's current shell-collecting rules and license exemptions at myfwc.com before taking anything alive.

Best tide

Low 12:06 AM

Parking

Free street parking downtown.

Restrooms

Yes

Fee

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Worth looking for here: Shells.

Found something you can't place? Identify it free from a photo, or compare it in the shell identification guide.