NARRATOR: In Florida,
storms, wind and waves sculpt the seacoast.
Left to the powerful forces of nature,
the place where the ocean meets the land is dynamic,
fluid,
and ever shifting.
But here, beaches anchor high-stakes hotels
and splash billions into the economy,
And nourish threatened and endangered species.
Human hands are changing Florida s shorelines forever,
but they can also help preserve and protect,
The Living Beach.
NARRATOR: The Florida peninsula
dangles off the southeast tip of North America,
separating the open waters of the Atlantic
from the Gulf of Mexico.
Florida is famous for its sandy shores,
and there s plenty to go around.
It has the most tidal shoreline
of any state in the continental U.S.A.
All combined, Florida's beaches
are the most popular tourist attraction in the country,
which poses some huge problems,
because its beaches are also homes for wildlife.
In Florida, officials use three very different approaches
to manage and maintain the beaches.
For animals, for people,
and to protect the coastline
from mother nature's raw power.
Lying just offshore from Florida's bustling mainland,
an untamed gem glimmers in the waters
of the Gulf of Mexico,
Sanibel Island.
Unspoiled and mostly undeveloped,
a rarity in southern Florida.
Sanibel Island formed when the sediment
from the Caloosahatchee River
began piling up on an undersea plateau
6,000 years ago.
As the sand built up,
shells began to accumulate here too.
MENSCH: Part of that's because of geography.
Sanibel lies east to west,
and most of the rest of the coast
lies north to south, and most of the currents
run north to the south,
so the island tends to act as a big stopping block
for anything that's getting pushed along
down on the bottom of the ocean.
NARRATOR: Today it's a haven for wildlife
and more than half of the island
is set aside as nature preserves.
Its lagoons and mangroves
host thousands of birds and invertebrates.
Gopher tortoises dig their burrows into the loose sand.
Manatees bask in the shallow water offshore.
Locals know it's important to protect it all,
right down to the seaweed washing up on the beach.
Beach experts call these deposits
at the high-water mark wrack lines.
CAOUETTE: Piles of debris
pile up on the beach
and it may look unsightly
but what it's doing is,
as that vegetation breaks down,
it'starts to take hold of seeds and everything
and you can see these,
this line of sea oats right here
was once a wrack line.
Those wrack lines help promote the new growth and everything,
which in turn provides excellent habitat
for beach nesting birds.
We have a snowy plover nest here.
Snowy plovers are shorebirds that nest,
that have been recorded since the early 90's
nesting on Sanibel Island
NARRATOR: These little birds
specifically adapted to living on the beach.
CAOUETTE: One of the things that is important
for the snowy plover is they use a lot of camouflage.
If you look at the beaches on the island here,
all the shell fragments and everything,
the shadows that those create on the beach
incorporated with the plumage of the bird,
do a great deal to camouflage the birds.
(caw, caw, caw)
See how the bird just squatted down
cause a crow came by.
That's his predator reaction right there, his camouflage.
NARRATOR: The plovers need natural beaches for nesting.
CAOUETTE: These birds nests, what they look like,
they're basically,
they're really no bigger than the cup of your hand.
If you were to take a tennis ball or a baseball
and slam it into the sand,
that indent that that ball makes,
is really what these nests are.
The male will make several practice nests,
we call 'em scrapes.
What he does is he basically takes his breast
and sticks it in the sand
and then kicks his feet out in a circular motion
and makes a perfect little cup.
If a male makes a scrape that the female likes,
they'll go ahead and they'll mate.
They'll go and what I call shell,
they'll shell the scrape, and they line the scrape
with tiny little fragments of shells,
you know, quarter inch to half inch size,
that's to keep the eggs off of the sand,
and then once the chicks hatch,
to keep the chicks off the sand as well.
Once those chicks initially hatch
they're all wet from the fluid in the egg
and whatnot, so it helps to kinda keep
the chicks a little clean
for those first few moments after they hatch.
NARRATOR: Plovers eggs are so expertly camouflaged
they're almost impossible to see.
That helps protect them from predators like raccoons,
coyotes, birds and snakes.
CAOUETTE: Their eggs basically look like little rocks.
They're little speckled, you know, they're tan
and they have little black and brown,
dark brown speckles on them,
so they look exactly like, you know, pebbles or stones.
NARRATOR: But the biggest threat to plovers isn t predators,
it's people trampling their nests.
Plovers' peak nesting season is April,
prime tourist time in Florida.
So on Sanibel Island, plover nesting sites
are kept off limits to people.
Elsewhere in America,
construction and human interference
destroy many snowy plover nesting sites.
Since 20% of the plovers
in Southwest Florida are born there,
the protected beaches on Sanibel Island
provide a sanctuary.
Conservationists established the first wilderness preserves
on Sanibel in the 1920's.
WOLF: Sanibel's a really special place.
Had it not been protected, it very well could have
ended up like the rest of Florida
where you have all the big condos
on the beaches.
Our beaches are all ungroomed here
so everything is left natural.
MENSCH: A lot of people think of a beach as a static thing.
This is the way the beach looks,
that s the way it looked last year
and that s the way it's gonna look next year,
and the beaches are actually extremely dynamic,
they're continuously changing,
even just day to day they can change.
Where the sand bars are are gonna shift,
and how high up the tide comes,
all of those things play a role
in what the beach looks like on any given day.
CAOUETTE: A lot of these beaches,
if you scan around here you see a lot of nice vegetation.
There s a lot of debris on the beach,
and Sanibel has done a great deal
to try to make their beaches as natural as possible.
Where if you were to go to maybe
the east coast of Florida
or another place where they rake their beaches,
they're constantly, and they have these
ideal human beaches, that don't have,
or they're devoid of vegetation,
those are absolutely terrible, for the most part,
not very good for wildlife.
NARRATOR: Sanibel's outer beaches
are important for wildlife,
and so are the shores of its inland lagoons.
When the tide goes out,
it reveals entire new worlds.
These fiddler crabs number in millions
on the shores of Sanibel's lagoons.
Each one is about the size of a watch face,
legs and all.
The male crabs have one outsized claw,
which gives fiddler crabs their name.
The smaller claw moves like a bow on a fiddle.
When the tide retreats,
they emerge and swarm on the beach
to engage in some very particular mating rituals.
The males use their big claw to advertise for mates,
and stake their claim to their territory.
This particular species of fiddler
whose scientific name means the boxer crab,
has a reputation for packing a punch.
When the males see a female they're interested in,
they tap their big claws on the ground.
The female crab picks her mate
based on who's got the biggest claw.
Size matters to female fiddlers,
who lay their eggs in their mate's burrow.
The bigger the claw, the bigger the burrow,
which improves the success rate of eggs hatching.
In two weeks, the female will emerge from the burrow
and release her eggs into the receding tide.
As the tide returns, the crabs retreat to their burrows.
They pack the entrance with mud
and wait until the water recedes again,
The little fiddler crabs are big players
in the symphony of Sanibel's food web.
They're a food source for wading birds
and the tunnels they dig
add oxygen to help sea grasses grow,
providing food for fish and other creatures.
All of Sanibel Island sits on top of sand and shells.
The beach is a paradise for collectors,
hunched over in what s called
the Sanibel Stoop.
Each shell once housed a tiny living creature,
like this Florida fighting conch,
about as long as your finger.
MENSCH: Shells are actually body parts of animals.
There's a very large group of animals,
an entire phylum, called the mollusks.
They cannot ever leave their shell,
it's physically impossible for them
to choose to leave the shell,
it's a permanently attached body part.
So when you're out looking for shells on the beach,
those shells are actually a dead skeleton of an animal.
The animal has died, the soft parts have decayed
and you're just collecting the hard part that s left over.
NARRATOR: There are many different groups of mollusks.
Conchs are a type of gastropod,
sea snails that live on coral reefs
and shallow seabeds.
Bivalves, like cockles and clams,
have two hinged shells.
They're the most common shells found on Sanibel's beaches.
MENSCH: After big storms,
sometimes that's actually the best shelling times.
You end up with a lot of that debris,
like dead shells that are down on the bottom of the ocean,
coming up and getting deposited on the beach.
So some of the really, really hard core shellers
are not as afraid of the hurricanes
as everybody else is because they know that means
there's gonna be some cool stuff out here
to look at once the storm has passed through.
These two weird looking things are egg cases.
This is where baby shells come from.
This is the egg case of a lightning welk,
and this is the egg case of a horse conch.
So you can see how different shaped they are.
These two species aren't very closely related to each other
but they are both gastropods.
And in this one, it looks like the babies developed,
they were ready to hatch out, and then something happened
that the babies didn't finish hatching.
So one of them is right here.
This is how big a horse conch starts out,
and horse conchs are the second biggest gastropod in the world.
We actually have the world record on display
at the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum
and that shell is 24 inches.
So that 24 inch shell
started off its life this big,
and for years and years
it's just been adding to the outside of the shell
getting bigger out and around and around.
So it never leaves this tiny shell it's born with,
they just add to it for years and years and years.
NARRATOR: In a protected habitat,
a shell smaller than your fingernail
can grow to be longer than your arm.
The beaches on Sanibel showcase shells upon shells,
a seemingly endless supply.
But even little Sanibel
cannot be an island against change forever.
A tiny shift in this living beach's delicate balance
is already bringing unthinkable results.
MENSCH: The pH of the oceans globally,
the pH is actually going down,
the oceans are becoming more acidic.
That is bad news for anything with a hard shell.
So it's bad news for corals and for mollusks.
NARRATION: There's already evidence that this acidity
in the ocean, caused by increasing carbon dioxide,
is making these animals produce thinner shells.
MENSCH: And we're starting to see evidence
in highly industrialized places
that this is happening faster,
because of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere,
it gets absorbed into the ocean,
it'starts dropping the pH,
and then it'starts breaking down those hard parts.
The prediction is that in the next 50 years or so,
we're going to start seeing that on a global level.
Even in places like here on Sanibel,
where we don't have a lot of industrial pollution,
but as the oceans mix and churn,
that's going to start playing a role everywhere.
It's going to affect everybody, no matter where you live.
NARRATOR: For the people who love Sanibel Island,
the goal is to leave the beach alone,
to protect and preserve it
as a nesting habitat for birds
and an attraction for nature lovers.
MENSCH: A long time ago the inhabitants of Sanibel
really realized what a special place this is,
and that if we don't help protect it,
that it's not going to be here
for continuing generations to come and enjoy.
NARRATOR: Without a history of protection and preservation,
Sanibel could have turned into
another sort of beach altogether.
On the opposite side of the state
the coast is completely different.
A beach man-made and carefully managed.
Miami Beach, the American Riviera.
Hot sun,
white sand,
bronzed bodies.
This is the Sunshine State at maximum wattage.
More people visit Florida s beaches
than all the national parks and theme parks
in the entire United States.
Miami Beach is famous for fun in the sun.
But if you think you re getting back to nature here,
you're dead wrong.
The only thing living on this beach is people.
They call it the Billion Dollar Sandbar.
This beach is brought in
one truckload and boatload at a time.
And it was actually created to protect the city behind it.
The City of Miami Beach is built on a barrier island,
a long narrow sandbar parallel to the mainland coast.
Barrier islands take the brunt of the ocean's force,
washing away and rebuilding between storms.
Protecting the mainland
as well as inland marshes and wetlands.
Miami Beach is a popular tourist destination.
But 50 years ago, the beach didn't t even exist.
Developers built the city on a barrier island,
with construction all the way to the water line,
protected by a sea wall.
FLYNN: That's what was happening from about the 1950's
through the early 1970's.
About 50% of the shoreline
had no beach at high tide -- at all.
It had seawalls.
The original beach restoration project in Miami Beach
was conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers,
and it involved the placement of about
17 million cubic yards of sand,
along 10-1/2 miles of shoreline.
At that time it was the biggest beach restoration project
that had been done in the world.
NARRATOR: This is now one of the most glamorous
and exclusive zip codes in the state.
But it's all sitting on top of sand.
And keeping sand in a place
where the ocean wants to wash it away
is a never-ending project.
We think of beaches as stable,
but the sand above and below the waterline
blows and flows with wind and currents,
gradually drifting.
The beach can eventually disappear altogether.
The city of Miami Beach
is constantly fighting nature
to maintain its sandy playground.
FLYNN: We take sand from alternate areas,
it could be offshore,
it can be an inland source of sand
that we truck the sand to it,
but essentially what we re doing,
is we're taking sand from another source,
and placing it where we need it on the beach.
Now part of the problem for us is that
we're running out of available sand sources locally.
We've been doing this for a really long time
and we've dredged a lot of the most suitable sand sources,
and we have very strict requirements as far as the sand
and what we can put on the beach.
And so if you go from dredging sand from an area
that's two miles offshore,
versus having to go to the center of the state
which is 130 miles away, your cost just skyrocketed.
And that s kind of what we're running into now.
NARRATOR: Natural beaches and barrier islands
are supposed to move and change,
but now there's a city built on it.
This artificial strip of sand
is all that keeps the hotels of Miami Beach
from falling into the sea.
FLYNN: We have a lot of infrastructure out here,
a lot of high-end infrastructure,
literally billions of dollars worth of property
that are right on the beachfront.
Beaches don t generally
erode uniformly,
and what we've found is that
we've got areas of the beach
where, since the initial restoration
back in the 70s and 80s,
we haven't had to do anything
to maintain the full beach width.
We've had other areas that have been chronic erosion areas
where we've had to go back five, six, seven times,
to maintain the width and the protection
that we need there.
This area had the highest erosion rate in all of Miami.
When you have a curve out on a flat beach,
generally that curve will get attacked during storm events,
and that's what was happening.
The shoreline was all the way back
behind where the dunes are.
And so it was a very severely eroded area,
it created a lot of public safety issues,
because emergency vehicles could't get by at high tide.
NARRATOR: At first, beach builders
were fighting a losing battle here,
everything they laid down just washed away.
FLYNN: We would go in and do a large project,
and build the beach out to almost 300 feet wide,
and three years later we would need to do another project.
People look at it, in a lot of cases, and they say,
you know, you're putting all this sand out here,
you're putting, spending all that money to do it,
and then we have a storm and it washes away.
Well the alternative is,
you don't put the sand out there,
and then your hotels wash away.
Recognizing that it's, it is a sacrificial barrier,
that's the important thing.
It is put there as a storm buffer.
By providing that protection when we do have a storm,
and I say when we do have a storm,
cause we will, we have and we will,
a lot of this infrastructure,
the damages that would occur otherwise,
are dramatically reduced.
NARRATOR: One keystone to holding the beach together
is a series of rock structures like this
along the shore.
FLYNN: Instead of breaking wave energy,
what they're doing is kind of holding the sand
as an anchor as you transition around that,
that curve on the beach.
And it's worked very well.
NARRATOR: After they built these breakwaters,
the sand seemed to stay put.
The beach is now ten times as wide as it was naturally,
and officials don't need to worry
so much about it all washing away
in normal weather.
But the Atlantic coast of Florida
regularly gets hit by huge storms
that go well beyond normal.
HAUS: We're very prone to
effects of storm surges from hurricanes,
and we're very vulnerable to sea level rise.
Every year that passes
as the waters come up,
we're going to be more and more vulnerable.
So it's critical for our future
here in South Florida,
that we learn how to forecast these things
so we can get out of the way better,
and we also learn how to make our homes
and communities more resilient,
if we're going to continue to live here.
NARRATOR: Just down the beach,
researchers in this laboratory
create their own storms to study to help
Miami Beach prepare for the worst.
HAUS: These are things that we can't study in nature,
one, because it's really hard to be there
with the equipment at the right time,
and it's also just really hard to observe.
NARRATOR: Researchers here built themselves
a hurricane in a box.
They can dial up the storm from category one
to category five anytime they want.
Dr. Brian Haus is testing better and smarter
coastal infrastructure,
that could change the face of Miami Beach someday.
HAUS: Here we have our sloping beach
that we can use to build coastal structures on,
to test models to see how we can improve
resilience of coastal structures
and coastal infrastructures.
The idea is you put a scaled model out there,
and hit it with these kinds of combined
really strong winds and waves and water level,
to look at the forces on the structure,
so then we can make better planning, better designs
to withstand these kinds of forces.
NARRATOR: They're not worrying for nothing.
In 1992, Hurricane Andrew
slammed into the Florida coastline,
killing dozens of people,
wracking up $25-billion worth of damage.
HAUS: The situation in Miami
is even more precarious than it might appear.
Not only are we vulnerable
to the storms coming off the Atlantic,
but west of us, the Everglades is very low,
and we sit on porous limestone,
so there's no way to keep the water
that comes from the west from coming underneath.
We're basically like on swiss cheese,
right at water level, next to the ocean.
FLYNN: There's a lot of people
that are opposed to coastal development
and, you know, they say, Well, you know,
as hotels get old, they should just tear 'em down
and, you know, retreat from the shoreline,
but the reality is,
this is an economic engine for this area.
So the best way to do it
is to do it as cost-effectively as you can,
making sure that there are no negative environmental
adverse effects, and basically
that's where your focus needs to be,
because the beach is always gonna be there.
NARRATOR: Miami Beach is a lot of things.
it's an amazing feat of engineering,
but one thing it's not is natural.
it's a stark contrast to Sanibel Island.
The beach is graded, groomed and manicured,
no wrack lines of rotting seaweed
or delicate bird nests here.
Maybe there s a middle ground,
a way to allow some development
while preserving nature at the same time.
In Sebastian, Florida,
officials try to strike a balance.
Sebastian is about three hours drive north of Miami.
The beach here is actively managed
but with nature in mind.
Like Miami Beach, Sebastian is a barrier island,
separated from the mainland by a lagoon.
The inlet connecting
the ocean with the lagoon behind the island
would naturally change shape over time
with the drifting sands.
This beach can't be left alone like Sanibel
or its shifting shape would undermine
the transportation infrastructure
like roads and bridges.
But it's an important wildlife habitat too,
so it can't be artificially managed like Miami Beach.
James Gray is the coastal engineer
in charge of making the beach do what the people want,
while maintaining it as a natural home for wildlife.
GRAY: So we have 22-1/2 miles of shoreline
and my task is to protect and restore
the critically eroded areas
of our shoreline,
which we have about 15.7 of the 22-1/2 miles
are deemed critically eroded.
There are other more natural alternatives as well,
and that's plantings, dune plantings,
trying to maintain more of a healthier dune.
This grassy-type habitat collects sand naturally,
and it will build up the dunes over time.
NARRATOR: Instead of just trucking in more sand
like in Miami Beach,
they're using a natural approach to keep the sand in place.
it's not great for sunbathers and tourists,
but it's terrific for wildlife
who need the beach as a habitat.
GRAY: In this case you can kinda see all this little vegetation,
these are sea oats.
We've planted these sea oats at certain spacing
to try and enhance the beach project that we put out,
and recreate more of a natural dune environment.
As you see behind,
this smaller vegetation is larger sea oats,
and sea grapes and other various species of plants.
it's really starting to take off.
NARRATOR: They're replicating what happens naturally
in the wrack lines on Sanibel Island,
only accelerated and carefully managed.
GRAY: This dune right here,
these were actually these little tiny dune vegetation
about three years ago
and it's established in a way here
where you can see it's, it's natural-looking.
So you can't even tell, it looks,
yes, it looks restored in this situation,
but this is what it's going to look like
a few years down the road,
a very, very healthy dune system.
You can see even the sea oats
are starting to seed and so forth,
so further perpetuating the natural volunteering
and enhancement of the dune feature.
NARRATOR: The sand here is almost as fine as sugar
and hard to keep hold of.
The dune grasses act like a screen,
catching the sand, keeping it from
blowing out to sea.
JAMES GRAY: I mean look how fine that material is.
Higher up along the dune
you have more of this smaller grain size material,
that kind of, you can kind of see.
You can see how important that vegetation is
'cause it's really collecting that sand.
Over time you get a dune that kind of looks like this,
which is higher, and that s because
the natural exchange with the wind
and the sand and the vegetation.
We're striving to maintain a dune system like this.
NARRATOR: County officials in Sebastian Island
are attempting a bit of a balancing act,
between the interests of wildlife and humans.
The beach still attracts plenty of visitors,
but it's a much slower pace than Miami Beach.
it's not graded or groomed,
and the people who come here
are looking for pretty much
the same things the wildlife are.
BIERMAN: I like to get out here early in the morning,
before everybody else.
This is paradise.
And the beaches are, as you can see there's,
there's not many people here.
There's just something about the,
the sun, the waves, the quietness.
it's just peaceful.
Don't tell anybody about my secret.
I don't want a million people moving here.
NARRATOR: The barrier island of Sebastian
protects inland marshes where birds
like this great blue heron make their nests.
And a tiny island in the lagoon behind Sebastian
is America's oldest wildlife preserve.
It's a critically important rookery
for seabirds like pelicans.
This beach is all that protects it
from the pounding storms of the open ocean.
BIERMAN: High tide's the best time
to come out here and fish.
A higher tide brings the bay fish in closer,
which then in turn brings the predatory fish in,
what I'm trying to catch.
NARRATOR: This Great Blue Heron
relies on its powerful neck and sharp beak
to spear fish in the shallows off the shore.
it's an iconic resident of the Florida coastline
and a better angler than most of the tourists.
♪♪
At least somebody s catching fish.
County officials set an ambitious
and tricky goal for themselves.
To make the beach seem so unmanaged,
So natural, that even the animals don't notice.
COPE: Our beaches are extremely important
for sea turtle nesting.
They are some of
the highest density nesting beaches
for loggerheads around the world.
NARRATOR: Loggerhead turtles are an endangered species.
They can live as long as 67 years
and travel huge expanses of ocean.
Saving the species will require
worldwide cooperation.
And every loggerhead begins its life on a beach like this.
COPE: They need lots of protection
and a lot of awareness to our communities
to know that they're there.
So that's what I do,
I get to be on the beach myself doing daily nest surveys.
Slowly counting the crawls.
NARRATOR: To protect turtle eggs,
Kendra Cope and her team
look for the tell-tale signs of nesting turtles,
then follow the tracks.
COPE: So this is a fresh, fresh nest.
And this...
they're going to be...
the widest, at the widest part of the crawl,
knees down, in the middle.
They should be...
...right here.
And then once they're found,
get a GPS location of that clutch of eggs,
and then mark it off with three big stakes around it,
with a sea turtle sign,
and then at the end of the day
that data all gets put into a giant database.
NARRATOR: In a single year,
researchers found 755 loggerhead nests
in a stretch of beach
that you can walk in just an hour.
COPE: She'll come in,
dig her nest, cover, and as she's covering
she'll circle around and leave
and head back into the water.
it's very characteristic.
And you can see these eggs
are about a foot deep into the sand,
which gives them a lot of barrier protection
from impacts on top of the sand,
but just enough space to give it the...
the right temperature and the right micro-climate
for these eggs to develop in.
NARRATOR: There s only 50,000 nesting female loggerheads
left in the world,
so the 80-thousand eggs laid on Sebastian Island
are critical to the future of the species.
COPE: So we have a very high success rate in these areas.
So when you're producing more hatchlings,
you're also producing the likelihood
of having more adults later on down the line.
It takes about two decades or more
just for a generation to become sexually mature.
So whatever happens now, we might not see the results
from what's laid now, for a very, very long time.
And so in the stretch of beach that we're in,
you could actually be standing on top of a nest
and not even know it.
We have such a high density of nests.
Within a half a kilometer stretch
you can have anywhere from upwards to,
I'd say 50 nests within an area.
So it's a very dense nesting beach.
NARRATOR: This is one of the most-important
loggerhead nesting areas left in the United States.
In other places they've been destroyed
by beachfront development and construction.
COPE: And we wanna repack this down
to make it nice and firm,
just like the mom does
whenever she's covering her nest.
She packs the sand down,
puts her own body weight on to these,
in order to compact the sand
to make it a perfect little micro-climate
and micro-habitat area.
So a loggerhead lays about an average of 110 eggs,
and she'll do this about five to seven times a season,
and she'll come back and lay her nest,
like every other year.
Many people want to know, well how in the world
do they know how to get back to the beach
that they are born at,
20 some-odd years down the road?
NARRATOR: Just like migrating birds,
sea turtles can orient themselves
to the earth's magnetic poles.
That incredible ability
allows them to return to the same place for life.
Which places tremendous importance
on beaches like Sebastian.
If the turtles that were born here
can't return to lay their eggs here,
they won't lay them anywhere.
COPE: Sea turtles need a sustainable, healthy beach
to have nesting habitat,
reproductive success for these endangered species.
NARRATOR: it's not enough to just lay down sand.
You need to keep enough sand
to make a wide enough beach that the turtles
can lay their eggs well above the high-tide mark.
That's where man-made solutions
like planting sea oats can help,
without building artificial barriers
like in Miami Beach.
COPE: Having a healthy beach means
having a large enough area to have
variability in where their nest can be laid.
You don't want all their nests to be laid
right near the tideline,
because with changing tides,
you can wash over a nest,
and when nests get washed over
then they don't become successful in the end.
And you don't want all of your nests
stuck up in a vegetated dune either,
because there's a higher proportion of predators
up in the dunes.
And you also don't want your beach covered in
seawalls or hard structures,
because those areas are more likely to erode
at a quicker rate,
and when you have high erosion rates,
then you're gonna have more sand
being taken away from the nest,
or even have nests exposed.
NARRATOR: Turtles evolved over millions of years,
long before humans walked the planet.
To preserve this ancient lineage,
it's critical to turn back time
and make this living beach as natural as possible,
and that means restricting some modern amenities,
like electric lights.
COPE: Artificial lighting these days,
on the back of hotels, condos, houses,
has been found to be extremely detrimental.
And this is because our hatchlings
have this natural ability to follow the moonlight.
And so when you have a full moon over the ocean,
you have this lit up water area
which attracts these turtles to the water.
But when you have this artificial light component
over on the other side of the beach,
it's a little bit brighter,
and those turtles are going to be naturally attracted
to that brighter light,
which is going to cause them to go the wrong direction.
It could put them in the way of a predator.
It could even start putting them in developed areas
on the back porch of someone's condo,
or swimming in someone's pool,
or even get run over by people's cars
in the middle of the street.
NARRATION: Even with all that effort,
nature stacks the odds
against these turtle eggs ever hatching.
Birds, domestic dogs, snakes and raccoons
all prey on eggs and hatchlings.
Predators raid up to half the loggerhead nests
on some U.S. beaches.
So protecting every little bit
of beach nesting habitat is crucial.
Straddling the line between natural and man-made,
Sebastian Island's beach
is a model of management,
The needs of people,
fish, birds and turtles
all carefully considered and controlled,
with a steady hand, and a light touch.
Three beaches,
three ways to deal with the natural forces
of the wind and waves,
From a man-made strip of sand
built to protect hotels in Miami Beach
from the worst the ocean can offer,
to Sebastian,
a beach managed for tourists
and turtles alike,
to Sanibel Island,
a natural beauty,
where nature is protected and allowed to flourish
unencumbered by human development.
Finding the sweet spot
between the Sunshine State's ecological
and economic interests is a fine art,
on the Living Beach.
♪♪