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It’s time.

Tropical Storm Fay has churned up our sky and water, bringing shells that are normally hidden deep beneath the waves to our beaches and within easy reach of those who seek them. The shellers.

“A day or so after a storm, usually there are a lot of scallops and other shells washed up on the beach, which made it most interesting,” says Bill Boggess, a veteran sheller. Ten years ago, he’d have been hitting the beaches this week, but these days, Boggess has enough shells — about 20,000 in his small condo in Fort Myers.

The retired civil engineer moved to Naples in 1984 from Kansas City. His Southwest Florida shelling expeditions took him from 10,000 Islands and Marco to Gordon Pass and Naples Beach.

Inside his tiny home, a large window lets light and a view of a canal of the Caloosahatchee River into the room. A mirror on the wall is angled just so, giving Boggess, 81, a wider view of the water from his favorite easy chair. Some shells are on shelves, labeled with bits of description cut out from books, others are meticulously arranged under glass table tops and sorted by species into jars.

Shells were once the homes for living things, he says — intricate, hard housing usually created by animals with soft, muscled bodies in need of protection.

Ask Boggess to show you his favorite shells and he pops up from the worn easy chair, fetching specimen after specimen.

It might a glass jar with a pedestal bottom that’s filled with coquina shells: those tiny bivalve shells you’ll see along the shore and burrowing into the sand when the waves recede. Or, maybe it’s a large, curling horse conch with the hard, brown animal foot intact, but the muscled body long gone.

Boggess is a collector. He’s collected stamps. Coins. Now he’s into genealogy. But from 1984 to 1997, it was shells. He loved the thrill of the unknown, he says. The feeling that the next great find was just around the corner, peeking out of the sand.

He can’t tell you their Latin names, but he can tell you all about the animal that once lived inside: how the body smoothed and polished the opening of the shell, or how once broken the shell grew back.

“See, shells get broken, but they regrow themselves, the pieces that were chipped off,” Boggess says as walks over to some of the glass shelves hung on the wall. “This is a Florida fighting conch,” he says, holding out a curling shell. “See where it was broken and grew back?”

When he returns the conch to the shelf, he pauses a minute to look at the others. “And now here’s another interesting one. This one is totally encapsulated in coral. It’s a shell,” he says, turning it in his hands. “But I don’t know what kind.”

Like other animals we’re more familiar with, shells start with a sperm and an egg, explains Jose Leal, a marine biologist and director of The Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum on Sanibel Island. After fertilization, a little tiny larvae grows into a young mollusk, and the shell begins growing very early.

Leal hasn’t seen Boggess’ shell collection, but number and type of shells sounded like a “very complete local collection.”

“When someone has a local collection like that they’re helping us know what’s out there,” Leal says. “We’ll know what was there during this person’s life. A collection like that is very important.”

Boggess talks here, in his own words, about shells, collecting and fitting 20,000 shells into a 470-square-foot condo.

On getting hooked on shelling

I retired in 1979 when I was 52 years old, and in 1984, I moved to Naples. ... I lived near the pier and I was on the beach every morning. I started seeing all these pretty little things and I started picking them up and finding out what they were.

I look at them now, and I’m dumbfounded that I found all of these shells. Some of them bring back fond memories, but it’s dumbfounding that I have accumulated so many.

I quit looking in ’97. I found everything that’s supposed to be on the Southwest Florida beaches. I had a heart attack, lost interest and took up genealogy.

On the shell that first captivated him

The one that hooked me is probably the horse conch, which is the official shell of Florida. My largest are 16 inches, but I’ve seen them up to 22 inches. ... They’re fascinating, and I loved to find them in all different sizes. Look at these. (He stands up and grabs a one-inch square plastic box with a magnifying top.) These are babies. They’re only about 1/8 of an inch long. They start out orange and then as they grow older they tend to loose the color. And just like there are albino people, you know, white hair, pink eyes — there are albino horse conchs, too.

On collecting

I was a coin collector and a stamp collector. I collect dust now.

With coins and stamps, I would buy or trade for what I needed. When I started shelling I thought, hey, you can buy anything you want, so, with one exception, all my shells are self-collected. The one exception is a baby triton trumpet I bought in Honduras. I found a large one in the Bahamas. They’re beautiful.

Why do I collect? I don’t know, insecurity I guess. When I get started on something, there’s no stopping. I loose all sense. I just totally get immersed in whatever I do, beyond good reason. Now it’s genealogy.

On live shelling

Normally I didn’t take live shells, unless it was something really special. Then, if it was a conch shell, you could make conch chowder or conch fritters. ... But I highly discourage (live collecting), and my over 20,000 specimens contain less than one quarter of one percent of (shells collected live).

On his favorites

They’re all my favorite. Though I thoroughly enjoy the babies. ... Some people do focus on particular shells, but I was greedy — I wanted them all. The small ones I loved, the large ones I loved and the ones in between I loved. No matter what, it thrilled me when I found it.

On the Latin names

I don’t know any of them. I flunked English, Latin and Spanish ... in high school. I have no desire to learn the Latin names.

On displaying 20,000 shells in a 470-square-foot condo

Someone told me that they see my engineering background in my layout, the methodical way I organized my shells.

On where they’ll go when he’s gone

That’s a big problem. I’m thinking seriously of adding a comment in my will that if the family doesn’t want them, that the Bailey-Matthews (shell museum on Sanibel Island) should have first choice on them.

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Shelling tips

From collector Bill Boggess and shell museum director José Leal:

1. Shells are abundant at low tide and after big storms

2. Sunup is the best time of day because you’ll beat out other collectors

3. Good places to shell include Keewaydin Island, Naples beach near Gordon Pass, Sanibel Island and any other natural beach

4. Be curious and check everything that looks like it might be a shell.

5. Don’t take live shells. It’s illegal in Collier and Lee counties. Plus, it’s not very nice for the inhabitants.

6. Refer to books like “American Seashells” by R. Tucker Abbott or “The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Shells” for identifying finds and cleaning methods

Bill Boggess’ shell collection by the numbers

-- More than 20,000 shells

-- About 15,000 univalve shells

-- About 2,000 bivalve shells

-- About 170 species, about 150 from Southwest Florida

-- 27 square feet of table-top display under glass

-- Three glass-topped tables

-- Nine glass shelves on a mirrored wall

-- 470-square-foot condo