After all the reports of “catastrophic” beach erosion in the media, I rushed out to have a look at the beaches for myself after the storm tides subsided. Here are some photos of several popular Tampa Bay area beaches:
The first is Treasure Island Beach near 103rd Ave, just south of the Bilmar. Still plenty of beach left, but there is still some standing water on the upper beach. This will evaporate or soak in after a few days.
There is no doubt that the beaches lost quite a bit of sand. And the damage to the turtle and shorebird nests is very sad, but as the season is not yet over, they may rebound to some extent. Some of the sand has been pulled from the dunes on several beaches, but much of it isn’t really going anywhere–it just got rearranged. This is a repeat of the same old story. People who built too close to the water are feeling the consequences of the natural movement of sand on the beaches. What do you expect?
The storm left some seaweed mixed with flotsam and jetsam on the beaches.
While there have been many seas turtle nests lost because of Debby, a number of nests seem to have survived on the very expansive Treasure Island beaches.
At the municipal beach on Treasure Island at 112th Ave there is a lot of standing water between the parking lot and the dune. But people are wading through it to get down to the Gulf.
Further south at Sunset Beach, the northern two crossovers are closed due to erosion.
Though quite a bit of sand was lost, there is still a beach at Sunset Beach. The grass-covered dunes did a nice job of protecting the shoreline. If there were a seawall here, there would be no beach left.
Looking south on Sunset Beach.
At Sunset Beach looking north. Still a nice beach.
Below: Pass-a-Grille Beach at 21st Ave. All of the standing water is gone. The beach looks fine. Most of the heavy erosion was south of the Paradise Grille.
I saw this web page title when I searched Google for “pass a grille beach erosion.” From the photos I took today, does it look “wiped out” to you? Are we sensationalizing just a bit?
The USF Coastal Research Lab was hard at work surveying the beaches to see how much sand was lost and where it went.
As you can see below, the seawall at the Paradise Grill has made a bad situation worse. Note the very heavy erosion near the wall.
The dune was partially washed away, but at least the walkovers are still functional.
Below is looking north on Pass-a-Grille Beach from the jetty. Despite the erosion, there is still quite a wide beach here.
Below is the same beach as above, in a photo taken back in July 2005. It was in much worse shape then. Notice how narrow the beach was in 2005.
