Fish and Wildlife Service helicopter shows how the Atlantic Ocean to the right and the Indian River to the left are barely separated by Playalinda.Ĭanaveral dunes are essential habitat for the federally endangered southeastern beach mouse.Ī host of protected marine birds spend some or all of their lives there. Hurricane Nicole’s scraping away of dunes along half of the seashore park significantly degraded two-thirds of the beach space where 14,000 sea turtles nests were documented this year.Ī significant portion of the road along Canaveral National Seashore’s Playalinda Beach was left buried by sand deposited by Hurricane Nicole in November 2022. The inputs for making choices are interacting and daunting. Kneifl said that while options are being assembled, “some of it might not be our choice,” meaning that nature may dictate critical steps ahead. We’ve always said ‘what would we do? Would we just let it go back to nature, would we build a bridge, would we reroute the road?'” “It just happened sooner than we all thought. “We’ve always known this is coming,” Kneifl said. There is another area seashore, about halfway along the 6 mile road, also showing vulnerability to high tides or storms cutting an inlet from the ocean to the Indian River. “It reminds me of somewhere in the Bahamas, or somewhere over on the Panhandle, or a flat moonscape basically. “It doesn’t look like our park,” Kneifl said. In an area of potential for such an inlet, about a half-mile beyond the last parking lot, Kristen Kneifl, Canaveral’s chief of resource management, found herself trying to make sense of the new landscape. Seen here driving along what’s left of the road, Henning is passing by where a protective dune once separated the ocean from the road. It’s where so much dune sand vanished, replaced by smooth beach lapped by waves.Īnd it’s where park staff suspect that with further storms, Canaveral National Seashore may be cut in half, breached by an inlet of Atlantic waters to the inshore Indian River Lagoon.Ĭanaveral National Seashore spokesperson Laura Henning drives along the access road of Playalinda Beach, which was left extensively buried under sand by Hurricane Nicole in November 2022. It’s there where Nicole left a moonscape along the access road and parking areas. The dunes along that stretch of road were not as robust and the barrier island that Canaveral National Seashore occupies narrows there. The fate of the next eight parking and access areas is an open question. Henning said the seashore staff has concentrated on reopening the first five lots to the public, slated for early January. The dunes along those five beach accesses are the seashore’s tallest and most robust. The first five lots and their extensive boardwalks that meet ADA requirements escaped major punishment from Nicole. The National Park Service, in effect, provides the city with its historic beach. That’s because when the nation’s space agency acquired lands for what is now Kennedy Space Center, Titusville was robbed of its beach – what is now Playalinda. Playalinda in Brevard County was meant to welcome more visitation than the northern end Canaveral National Seashore, Apollo Beach in Volusia County, which has 250 parking spaces along 6 miles of access road. The southern half of Canaveral National Seashore, Playalinda Beach, has 14 parking lots strung out along 6 miles of a two-lane blacktop. Park spokesperson Laura Henning walks here through the space of a former dune. Hurricane Nicole scraped away half of the dunes along the 24-mile Canaveral National Seashore.
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