Whether you’re a longtime resident or a brand-new visitor, you’ve probably already realized that in Sarasota, life’s a beach. Yes, we have all sorts of cultural riches, sophisticated shops and a dazzling restaurant scene as well. But it’s that emerald-green expanse of shining Gulf waters lapping at 35 miles of sandy white shores that makes life here so magical, promising beauty, renewal and elemental drama every single day.

And I’m not the only one who thinks Sarasota’s beaches are sensational—that’s the expert opinion of the guru of Florida beaches, 47-year-old David McRee.

McRee, who was just named Florida’s official beach expert by the state tourism board, Visit Florida, and whose own Web site, beachhunter.net, has become the go-to guide on Florida’s beaches for more than 30,000 visitors a month, has spent much of the last decade walking, swimming and studying Florida’s Gulf shore—and now he’s starting to study the Atlantic beaches as well. “Of all the beaches I’ve been to, Sarasota has the greatest variety,” he says. “And you have free beach parking—people don’t appreciate how unique that is.” We also have some of McRee’s favorite Florida beaches, including his “Best Beach Overall,” Siesta Key Public Beach.

But before we hear about his other Sarasota favorites, how did a quiet, orderly guy who’s spent most of his career as a CPA re-invent himself as an almost full-time beach bum? It started about a decade ago, when McRee was working full time in Bradenton while going back to school—and serving as single dad to his teen-age son. Stressed and overloaded, he remembered how much he’d loved going to the beach as a child, when his parents would load up the car in west Bradenton and they’d drive through what was then undeveloped woods to the bridge to Cortez, where he’d thrill to what was in those pre-condo days a panaromic view of the Gulf stretching out to the horizon. At 14, he took up surfing, spending hours alone in every kind of weather—including, he says, some exhilarating afternoons when storms would sweep in and blind him to everything but the pounding rain and waves around him.

“I need to go to the beach again,” he thought, and on the weekends his son spent with his mother, he began walking Sarasota’s beaches. “At the beach, we leave everything behind and just be,” he says. “It’s almost meditative.” And though “the beach is different every single day,” he discovered that every single beach is different, too, from the color and slope of the sand to the amenities and activities there. He decided he’d explore some other Florida beaches, but when he looked for a good guidebook, he couldn’t find one. “I’ll write one myself,” he decided; and in his careful, methodical way, McRee began traveling to every Gulf beach from Dunedin to Marco Island, taking notes and photographs—and usually, because of his limited budget, driving back home every night.

It took nine years of research, sandwiched between finishing his degree and full-time CPA job, for McRee to finish his book. Then he discovered that getting a book published and sold was just as challenging as writing it. He started his Web site to promote book sales; but as he learned to attract traffic and added features to his site, from slide shows and a blog to a free e-book on beach safety, he realized that his real ambition had become “to provide useful information about Florida beaches in a variety of ways.”

McRee still does some part-time accounting, but mainly you’ll find him working on his site or strolling, snorkeling or swimming at the beach—wearing sunblock, a hat and a surfer’s rash-guard shirt if he’s in the water. (“I’m a huge believer in sun protection,” he says. “So many visitors get totally burned in their first half hour on the beach, and it ruins their vacation.”) And even when he’s trapped in his home office, around twilight, if the sky outside looks promising, he’ll make the 10-minute drive to the beach to watch the sunset. (Florida’s beautiful cloud formations, he says, are the secret to our spectacular sunsets.) “Any time at the beach is great,” he insists, and every beach has its attractions. He refuses to rate beaches by a numerical system, writing instead about each one’s strengths and weaknesses.

McRee lives in St. Petersburg now, but he often drives down to enjoy Sarasota’s beaches. Siesta Beach tops his list for the white, white sand that’s so flat and hard that people can jog or bike for miles. The gradual slope means safe shallow waters—and it attracts “toned, tanned, young and beautiful people.” A little farther south, Point of Rocks provides the Gulf Coast’s best snorkeling without a boat—he’d been out there with his mask and fins the day before we talked—and Turtle Beach offers a tranquil walk down to Casey Key, where an occasional fisherman, low-flying black skimmers and a surfacing dolphin might be your only companions for a mile.

Our best-kept secret may be Caspersen Beach in Venice, where the native vegetation and splendid isolation yield a glimpse into the unspoiled Florida of the past. Venice also offers a wonderful Gulfpier—every visitor should walk out on a pier, he says, for the sensation of being away from land and over water—and Longboat Pass, Nokomis Beach and Venice have jetties for sunset-watching. Blind Pass Beach on Manasota Key has both beauty and convenience, with a parking lot and bathrooms along with “palm trees covered with salt spray and shimmering in the sun.”

He also loves walking up North Lido, where ospreys brood on their nests, to look across New Pass to the graceful line of Longboat’s condos curving to the north. And though Longboat Key’s lack of public access presents a challenge, he maintains “you can go to the beach there if you’re determined.” He parks in the small lot on Broadway, near Beer Can Island, then walks south for miles, admiring the water, which “is almost always beautiful, with a pure green color.”

McRee has had close encounters with all sorts of marine creatures, from being surrounded by a school of giant cow-nose rays that swarmed through his legs as he stood in the water at Passe-a-Grille in St. Petersburg to watching dolphins toss fish into the air and leap out of the water to catch them again as he sat on a dock on Pine Island. But it was near Longboat Pass at Coquina Beach that he had what may be the peak beach experience of his life. On a chilly winter night, he got up at 4 a.m. and drove to the beach to see the Hale-Bopp comet streak across the sky. Alone and shivering in the vast night, he crawled into a sleeping bag and stared up at the sky. “As my eyes adjusted, I realized there were other people all around me doing the same thing,” he says. The comet arrived, its golden tail on fire—along with a spectacular meteor shower, as the crowd lay transfixed in silent awe.

After I finished talking to McRee, I put away my notebook and sat thinking at my desk. “I need to go to the beach,” I said. Don’t you?

McRee’s Florida Beaches can be ordered from beachhunter.net. For a complete listing of Sarasota’s beaches, go to our Visitor’s Guide at sarasotamagazine.com.