"REJOICING" IN SAND!

Yes, it official! County officials and residents "rejoiced" because of an announcement by U.S. Representative Rooney on Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers will, according to an article in the "St. Lucie News Tribune" on Thursday, May 19, 2011, spend "$6.1 million to renourish Fort Pierce Beaches". As you may remember, the erosion of our stretch of beach was of major concern to this writer at the beginning of this turtle nesting season, since severe erosion and huge "escarpments" along our beaches (see previous blog entries) were restricting sea turtle access to our beaches. Unfortunately, the above described renourishment efforts can't begin until after this turtle nesting season has ended, but such an effort in between nesting seasons will drastically improve the beaches for the next turtle nesting season beginning in March/April of next year. Congratulations to Rep. Tom Rooney for taking up the cause and getting the Army Corps of Engineers to expend the dollars that were supposed to have been expended on beach renourishment this year anyway. Our thanks to Rep. Rooney for his part in getting some action relative to this problem.

Obviously, this project wasn't only critical to our nesting sea turtles. Probably more important in many minds was the adverse impact that not renourishing the beaches would have on our local economy. We do have a "tourist season", as well, and if that was the main consideration for getting renourishment money for our beaches, so be it! I'm sure that the "tourist dollar", and protecting public and private property along that stretch of beach were the prime factors but, at least, the sea turtles and their future nests and hatchlings will benefit along with the tourists.

Speaking of sea turtle nests, we now have 6 nests by my count. One is definitely a nest, as officially marked by the EAI, but the other 5 are only "turtle crawls" that appear to have nests that were laid closer to the dune line (sea oats, sea grasses, etc.). I'm going to keep track of those this year, again, because EAI is only marking "one out of every so many" - I'm guessing 1 out of 24 this year. So.... I will attempt to keep track of those "suspected" sea turtle nests, even though EAI is not. The attached map shows where the nests are to date along our stretch of beach. Wish us well for the remainder of the season!