Cleaning Shells by Joyce Matthys

The 2021 Virtual Sanibel Shell Show may be over, but the viewer activity on our YouTube channel is still going strong. Each of our individual videos is available ON DEMAND for free on our Sanibel Shell Club YouTube channel or on our website. Just browse our selection, click on the video thumbnail image, and watch your favorites again and again.

An interesting aspect of now having a vast video library on our channel is watching the YouTube viewer statistics. As of today, we have had 19,500 views of our videos so far in March. Much of our post-show viewer traffic is driven to our videos by YouTube recommendations. 330,600 is the number of times that YouTube showed random viewers our video thumbnails, and this has greatly expanded our audience.

Q: Which are our most watched videos of all the 47 Shell Show videos? (Most watched based on a combination of number of views and highest audience retention, meaning more people watched these videos longer without clicking off.)

A: Joyce Matthys’ How to Clean Sand Dollars, Sea Urchins, and Sea Stars is #1 most watched video. The Sanibel Shell Crafters DIY Shell Flower Shadow Box video is #2. And Basic Shell Cleaning by Joyce Matthys is #3.

Joyce is famous in our Shell Club for sharing beautifully-filmed instructional, educational, and informative videos, among many other things. We wanted to know how she learned so much about cleaning shells.

Shell Cleaning Advice from Joyce Matthys

“Most of what Ken and I learned about cleaning shells came from the other shell collectors who stayed in the Periwinkle Park Campground on Sanibel. The rest was through trial and error. For instance, it wasn’t until we had permanently damaged a beautiful sunray venus that we realized that glossy shells should not be put in pure bleach.

Over the years, shell collectors have used different methods to bring out the color of their shells. Spraying shells with a clear finish is frowned upon. These shells can not be entered in a shell show. The most recent craze is to spray your shells with Original Formula ArmorAll. It brings out a shell’s color and it is said to provide UV protection so that your shell will not fade as quickly. 

There is one thing that is not mentioned in the shell cleaning video. That is, except for bivalves, every shell has to pass the “sniff test” after it has been cleaned and dried before it is added to my collection. I literally smell every single shell before I put it away. That is because even the smallest piece of a snail’s dead body that remains in the shell can really stink. When I find a shell that fails the test, it goes back into the bleach for at least another couple days. Then it is rinsed and dried before I smell it again. There are times when a shell simply has to be thrown away because of its smell. 

I’ve been asked what I do with the bleach water when I’ve finished cleaning my shells? First of all, I personally do not add water to my bleach. I use pure bleach. I keep it in a bucket with a tight lid and continually reuse it until it loses its strength and is no longer effective. At that time, I add more water to it and pour it out on the ground in my backyard. I do not pour it down a drain in my house because there is always some residual sand in it.

What shells do I consider the hardest to clean? It is hard to get barnacles off shells with rough exteriors such as Sanibel’s beautiful Atlantic Calico Scallops or murex shells. Even after they are soaked in bleach, it can take a lot of scraping with a dental pick to remove the residual base of a barnacle from between their fine ridges. Likewise, it is hard to get dead body parts and debris out of any snail with a small aperture. 

After 30 years of walking the beaches on Sanibel, I no longer collect shells like I used to. I leave them for visitors who are just beginning their collections. However, I still can’t resist an orange jingle shell, a juvenile Horse Conch, or a very glossy Lettered Olive.”

Thank you, Joyce, for generously sharing your knowledge and experience.

Sharing Our Videos

Keep watching our website as we highlight various videos throughout the year. Meanwhile, check out our videos with descriptions here, video speaker bios here, and consider which of our videos might be appropriate to share with other shell clubs, civic or social groups, churches, retirement villages, or charity functions. Many of our videos could be grouped together to create an interesting program. Or individual videos would make a fun introduction before a technical presentation, shown during a break, or at the closing of any meeting. See the list below. Contact us at info@sanibelshellclub.com to request permission to share our videos with your groups.