Honeymoon Island State Park is one of the most visited state parks in all of Florida. It generates more revenue than any other Florida state park on the beach. On any given weekend in the Spring and Summer you’ll find the beaches packed shoulder to shoulder with people basking in the warm air, playing in the water, and fishing. It’s a place that impacts many people’s lives through the enjoyment they derive from the activities surrounding this little piece of land.

According to park staff at Honeymoon Island State Park, the beaches have been approved for re-nourishment. All four existing t-groins are planned to begin being re-nourished in November of 2019. Let me tell you a little history with what’s happened in the past re-nourishments, then tell you about what’s going to happen, with of course my opinions and tangents scattered throughout.

It’s not something a surfer in the area would want to see happen. Simply adding sand along the beach does absolutely no good for surfing. The contour of the beach becomes to steep, and the beach doesn’t have any natural slopes to allow the natural wave shape to break along the sandbar. Sand gets moved around to places where we don’t want it. It covers up things we don’t want covered up. We typically see a loss of wave quality for the initial months of a dredge that completely covers a surf spot in sand (what we’re expecting here). The last dredge completely wrecked “the cafe”, the surf spot in front of the restaurant called The Cafe. A whole lot of sand piled up just on the outside of the sand bar. It created a weird double sand bar. The wave now breaks with a weak peak on the outside, almost unrideable, then mushes out, and doesn’t break until it reaches the rock piles near the beach. It was fun occasionally, mostly bad. Sand is bad for surfing.

Structures added like the t-groins can be beneficial to surf. We’ve seen a wave quality and consistency unlike what we’ve seen in the past on these new groins. The third t-groin going from north to south has become the most perfect wave. Whether it was swell direction, tide height, or wave contour, it was the best it’s been in a long, long time on a recent Spring cold front swell, decades maybe. It has been consistently really good. There was a concern t-groins would really hurt the wave, and they did on the northernmost spot where we usually surf where they groins are too close together. What was unexpected was the impact it had on the Oasis parking lot sand bar (3rd t-groin) where the groins are spread a little further apart. That wave became so perfect. It has always been where one of the the waves break. Now that sandbar has become that amazing point wave with incredibly long rides consistently.

A new project is about to start in November to re-nourish the beaches again. There’s no question whether or not the beaches need to be re-nourished, they do. The beaches heavily drive tourism in the area. It probably hurts residents like myself who would like to find a home near the water where I can easily take out my boat if property values increase. Especially if tourism isn’t helping me find a job with reasonable wages, which it probably isn’t. However, beaches probably need to be re-nourished. I don’t live any where near there. I even have a boat, so it wouldn’t hurt me all that much if there wasn’t a beach, or even a parking lot. I guess from a tourism perspective, people won’t want to take up space and give me crap about surfing being dangerous or me hitting on their old, ugly girlfriends if they don’t have a beach to go to. I guess we need a beach.

When I discussed the project with surfers, many are in agreement. This is a bad thing. One even declined to help approve project plans because it conflicts with something he enjoys. Another seemed to think it has something to do with the “natural preserve,” a reason why this couldn’t be stopped on a short term basis. I think he was referring to the park generally, more accurately, we’re talking about the cement parking lot being preserved. It seems sort of ridiculous to even suggest it has something to do with preserving the wildlife habitat. I’ve written about how the beaches past the northernmost parking lot are completely gone, mangroves and other island plants getting washed into the ocean, so it clearly has nothing to do with that. He told me this after I brought to his attention the fact that there are big female and male snook that sit on the ends of every single one of these t-groins.

There are redfish, black drum, sheepshead, snapper, flounder, and many other species that have for years now used these structures for safety and for food. All the guides know these t-groins well. I’ve caught snook on them. On any given day you can find someone out there trying to catch fish. Important to note here. The snook and redfish have been closed to harvest for a very long time now, reportedly because of “red tide.” I’m putting red tide in quotes, because that’s a joke if you ask me. In North Pinellas County we only had red tide for maybe one or two weeks, based on what I saw, and I was going out to the beaches on a weekly and bi-weekly basis to go surfing. I even surfed in red tide when it was really horrible at Sand Key. Clearwater did get it pretty bad, but it wasn’t long enough to constitute closing snook for as long as they have. From what I understand they are closed until 2020. I would even guess that haven’t done an assessment with recently acquired stock data since the recent red tide kill, or before. With a fish closure like that, wouldn’t you think they would be more concerned about the well being of the various species that live on the jetties and use them to feed during their spawn in the summer. Snook spawn in and around the deep passes, ones just like Hurricane Pass, the one adjacent to these t-groins. It seems like this is an unanticipated problem with their t-groins.

I reached out to a number of people about this. First I reached out to the FWC officer at the beach. He said, the FWC board makes decisions about those kinds of things. The FWC gives the fish and wildlife the go-ahead on projects that impact fish and wildlife in the state. I reached out to the high ranking FWC officials, none would talk to me without me first telling their screener what I wanted to discuss with them. I also reached out to the chair of the FWC board. I left a message on a voicemail I found through the company he owns listed on his biography. He hasn’t replied. I also saw his companies financial interests description on the companies website, which appear to heavily include tourism related activities like hotels and restaurants. It suggests to me a major conflict of interest is present, which would explain how this is possible. I reached out to the governor who’s office replied to me moments ago with this e-mail:

You should also remember, this isn’t me just saying, this is rediculous, and no one is taking thoughtful measures to preserve the beaches (which encompass the wildlife there). It’s also a suggestion to put a jetty on the beach like the one at Sand Key. A jetty that blocks the current for surfers and provides a really exceptional sand holding structure while providing the fish a home that won’t be disrupted every 8 years for beach re-nourishment. They could have even extended the t-groins another 100 yards; that would have been perfect.  I may be suggesting something that isn’t ideal for surfing at the beach. Maybe the current state of t-groin location is ideal for surfing. What I can say with certainty is that the t-groins, re-nourishments, and decision making regarding these issues are fraught with problems.