American Tourists Alerted: Bringing Home Beach Souvenirs Could Lead to $36,000 Fine and 3 Years in Jail!

TOURISTS could land themselves in big trouble if they bring home a sandy souvenir this summer.

Vacation goers may be forced to pay a $36,000 fine and serve jail time.

Tourists need to beware of the rules around keepsakes in a popular vacation spot Credit: Alamy Seashells are so pretty but jail time is not Credit: Getty

It’s always fun to admire and pick up pretty seashells and unique rocks while at the beach, but it’s important to remember where they belong.

Although it is perfectly acceptable to collect seashells in a sandcastle bucket – or snap photographs of them – taking them home as a memento in one popular vacation spot is forbidden.

Throughout June and July, approximately 140,000 US citizens will visit Costa Rica for a tropical vacation.

But over the past six years, authorities at Daniel Oduber Quirós International Airport in Liberia, Guanacaste, have confiscated nearly 8,900 kilograms of seashells from travelers attempting to take them out of the country.

That’s roughly the equivalent to the weight of an adult male African elephant.

Every kilogram of that total was once part of a living coastal ecosystem, so every person caught carrying those shells faced the consequences of Costa Rica’s Wildlife Conservation Law.

The days of slipping a conch shell into a checked bag and hoping for the best are over; airport scanners at both Liberia and Juan Santamaría International are set up to detect shells in luggage.

Costa Rica’s beach laws are not polite or forgiving, so the risk is certainly not worth it.

The country’s legal framework states that removing shells, coral, sand, or rocks from beaches and protected areas is classified as the extraction of natural heritage.

Plus, transporting wildlife products, which is precisely what shells are considered under the law, is treated as illegal wildlife trafficking.

Article 95 of the Wildlife Conservation Law states for species not considered endangered, the penalty for unauthorized removal, transport, or transfer runs from one to five base salaries in fines, or a prison sentence of four to six months.

For species whose populations have been declared reduced or at risk of extinction, the penalties escalate sharply to fines of 10 to 40 base salaries and a prison sentence of one to three years.

In both instances, the shells or wildlife products are confiscated entirely.

Using Costa Rica’s 2026 base salary figure of 462,200 colones as the reference point, a fine at the lower end of the scale for non-endangered species runs to roughly 462,200 colones, equivalent to approximately $900.

At the upper end, for endangered species, 40 base salaries translates to nearly $36,000.

These figures do not include added legal costs, potential deportation, or the impact of a criminal record on future travel to Costa Rica.

Shells are active components of coastal ecosystems; hermit crabs depend on them for shelter, while fish and invertebrates use them as breeding grounds.

When large volumes are removed, the effects ripple outward through the ecosystem that takes a long time to reverse.

If you want to take a keepsake home, a good alternative is to find a souvenir shop where you buy items to remember your trip.