“Most people don’t know that we’re a natural history museum that happens to focus on one type of animal,” she explains. “We’ve worked hard to create a multi-media experience for visitors that involves interactive displays, hands- on experiences, creative workshops and on- the-beach educational tours. Our staff is led Dr. Jose Leal, science director and a world-renowned malocologist, along with two marine biologists, an educational director, a highly passionate support team and more than 70 wonderful volunteers. Our goal is clear: we want everybody who goes out our doors to know more than when they arrived, and that they really had a delightful time learning.” The Bailey Matthews National Shell Museum ranks among the top five destinations on Sanibel Island among TripAdvisor reviews, with double-digit growth over the past few years that now welcomes more than 60,000 visitors annually. One of the unique ways the museum grows its cumulative team knowledge is a five-minute start to each day, when Dr. Leal presents his “shell of the day” — some local, some exotic, some fossilized — one unique shell after another. “It’s amazing how much we learn and how that benefits our visitors,” she says. That’s an important five minutes, because museum surveys show that 90% of its visitors don’t know that actual living animals create shells. “Our feeling is if we can change the way people look at beaches — wherever they may have come from —
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