Hitting the Beach

The people who knew what they were doing wouldn't arrive for another 14 hours. So I stepped out of my chilled room at Tiara by the Sea, the funky motel in Melbourne, Florida (where the great sea turtle researcher and conservationist Archie Carr used to stay), and plunged into the steamy black night of July 26, 2005.

At least I knew enough to wear dark clothes and move slowly along the dry part of the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, the 20.5-mile stretch of beach (if you count private inholdings) between Melbourne and Wabasso. I headed north, staying 50 feet above the white surf line. The glow from the phalanx of low, oceanfront houses hung over the beach like swamp mist, barely staining the sand.

I crossed a turtle track about every 20 feet, some fresh, some days old, some on top of each other, all resembling snowmobile spoor. The flippers of the loggerheads left alternating impressions, like the divots a kayaker cuts on a quiet lake surface with a double-bladed paddle. The rarer greens, whose nesting season was just getting under way, left parallel prints like those cut by a sculler.

I didn't see my first turtle for an hour—a green well over 300 pounds at the edge of the grass, kicking sand eight feet into the air. I sat and watched her until she'd buried her eggs. And when she hauled back toward the Atlantic she almost ran me over, showering my head and shoulders with sand and brushing my leg with her left flipper.

As the air cleared and the Milky Way lit the sea, I saw or imagined dark forms in the breakers. And then, before I could stop and crouch, I almost tripped over a loggerhead. She turned and retreated, aborting her nesting attempt as well as my outing, and leaving me dispirited and wondering if this qualified as a “take” under the Endangered Species Act.

The Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, designated by Congress in 1989, is one of the stunning successes of the Endangered Species Act and the National Wildlife Refuge System. It is far and away the most important sea turtle nesting area in the United States and one of the two most important in the world. Greens, which have a biennial nesting cycle, construct something like 2,800 nests here in a high year and 200 in a low year. Corresponding figures for the whole state are 8,000 and 500. Leatherbacks—the largest turtle on earth (up to 2,000 pounds) and the most grievously endangered of all sea turtles—nest on the refuge. A quarter of all loggerhead reproduction in Florida occurs within refuge boundaries. Loggerheads were doing okay here until about six years ago, when they started a steep decline. In 2004 loggerhead nests reached a 20-year low of 8,000, down from 20,000 in 2000. But 2005 was a better year—11,085 nests, while greens (3,640 nests) and leatherbacks (68 nests) had record seasons.

Because Florida's beaches sustain 90 percent of the nation's sea turtle nesting, it's imperative that the state have especially enlightened policies for beach management and coastal development. Instead, it has the most backward in the nation.

Because Florida's beaches sustain 90 percent of the nation's sea turtle nesting, it's imperative that the state have especially enlightened policies for beach management and coastal development. Instead it has the most backward in the nation. For example, it is one of the few states that still permit extensive shoreline “armoring” with cement and metal seawalls. Seawalls do little to protect human dwellings, which shouldn't be built on the beachfront any more than they should be built on a river's floodplain. And seawalls deflect wave energy seaward, thereby eroding sand. Instead of a beach, sea turtles find gravel and bedrock that's inundated at high tide. In the unlikely event that a turtle keeps moving inland, she hits her head on the seawall. In Florida you can even build seawalls for land speculation—that is, you may lawfully use them in an attempt to protect undeveloped land.

Seawalls encourage development, which, in turn, brings more seawalls. And seawalls give home buyers a false sense of security. Florida's beachfront dwellings, allegedly protected by seawalls, are forever being destroyed by storms. In many cases owners are able to collect taxpayer-provided state and federal insurance, then rebuild.

Sarasota County, on Florida's west coast, provides a vignette of what's happening statewide. About a third of the county's 35-mile oceanfront has been armored with seawalls, and more are going up. On Casey Key, where houses built in the path of the advancing sea are being washed away, residents have recently obtained a permit to construct a 600-foot-long cement-and-aluminum seawall. And in Manasota Key—with the highest density of turtle nests on the Gulf Coast—beachfront residents are pushing for, and doubtless will get, a 2,400-foot seawall. Retreat is a word anathema to Florida bureaucrats and the $200 million-a-year Florida seawall industry. But when you're squaring off against a storm-prone sea—particularly one swelling with ice-cap meltwater from global warming—retreat is the only sane course.