So You Want to Find Sand Dollars

Every time someone finds out we hunt sand dollars, same question. “Where do you even find those?” Like it’s some secret. It’s not. You just need to know when to show up.

Tides. That’s it. That’s the secret.

Forget everything else for a second. If the tide isn’t right, you’re just taking a walk. Which is fine, but you’re not finding sand dollars.

You want a negative low tide. That’s when the number on the tide table goes below zero. The ocean pulls back way further than normal and you can walk on sand that’s usually underwater. That’s where the dollars are.

A minus-0.5 at 6:30 AM? That’s a get-out-of-bed morning. A 1.5-foot low at noon? Stay home.

The new moon and full moon weeks produce the biggest tidal swings. I check the tables like some people check sports scores.

Where we go

Del Mar, south of Powerhouse Park toward the river mouth. The flat sandy patches between the reef sections are the spots. Just south of the 15th Street tower there’s a wide shelf that produces almost every time on a big negative tide. Found 17 in a cluster there once. Seventeen. Just sitting on the surface like somebody put them there.

Carlsbad State Beach, south of the campground. We started going up there last year and honestly the hunting is easier. Coarser sand means the dollars sit right on top instead of half-buried. The reef shelf exposes at anything below 1.5 feet.

We’ve tried Torrey Pines and Moonlight in Encinitas. Nothing consistent. Doesn’t mean they’re not there, just means we haven’t cracked them yet.

The actual technique

Walk the waterline. Slowly. Look down. That’s genuinely it.

A few things I’ve picked up:

They cluster. If you find one, stop moving. Look around in a ten-foot circle. There are more. Almost always.

The edges where rocky reef meets sand are collection points. Water moves around the rocks and drops stuff on the sheltered side. Check those spots.

Go early. I can’t stress this enough. The 6 AM people with coffee and a zip-lock bag — they clean up. By 10 the easy ones are gone. I’ve watched a guy with a headlamp out there before sunrise. That’s commitment. Respect.

Bring a mesh bag or a zip-lock, not a bucket. They break if they’re clanking against each other. Whole ones are the prize. Halves go back on the sand.

Live vs. dead

Dead ones are white or gray, smooth, dry. Those are keepers.

Live ones are dark purple-brown and fuzzy — covered in tiny spines that move when you hold them. Put those back. Just set them down in shallow water. They’ll bury themselves in about thirty seconds. Pretty cool to watch, actually.

No ambiguity between the two. If it feels like velvet, it’s alive.

After you get them home

Rinse in fresh water. Set them in the sun for a day. Done.

Some people do a bleach soak — one part bleach, three parts water, ten minutes. Makes them whiter. I think they look better with the natural off-white but that’s personal preference.

We keep a big glass jar on the bookshelf. Just toss the good ones in after every hunt. Four years of finds in there now. The little dime-sized ones are my favorites.

The part that sounds cheesy but is true

The sand dollars are why we started going. But that’s not why we keep going. It’s the cranes standing in the shallows at dawn. It’s having the beach to yourself at 6:15 on a Tuesday. It’s the pelicans running their fishing formation two feet off the water.

You’re going to go out on a negative tide morning and walk slowly for two hours and find six sand dollars. And then you’re going to want to do it again next week. And then you’re going to start checking tide tables on your phone at work. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.