Sanibel Beach parking closed for Tropical Storm Debby cleanup

The cleanup from Tropical Storm Debby continues, at least it does in the Sanibel Lighthouse Beach parking lot.

“There’s sand over the parking lot,” said Eric Jackson, Sanibel public information officer. “There’s also a lot of water in the parking lot, so you don’t want people driving in there, and it’s just, it’s not a great place to park right now.”

Lots and lots of sand, but Sanibel’s on it.

“They are working really hard to get things open back up again,” said Jackson.

While most of the beach parking lots are closed, people are still welcome to walk the beaches, which is where WINK News found the Buhite family collecting shells.

“We’re out here shelling for the first time since the storm passed, and the rains finally moved out and right off of low tide, so there’s a lot of shells out right now. So far its been pretty good,” said one of the Buhite family members.

“With those strong tides, it sort of washes a lot of stuff in, and we are a big shelling destination,” said Jack Brzoza, a biologist with the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation.

Along with the shellers on the beach, the Sanibel Captiva Conservation Foundation was checking on the sea turtles.

“We’re trying to determine which nests were lost due to the storm, it might have completely washed out and which may have lost their external nest markers, but there’s actually still a nest. There’s still eggs intubated in the sand,” said Brzoza.

Brzoza with SCCF says many nests were impacted, but as they evaluate them, they hope for the best.

“Sea turtles have adapted their nesting strategy over time to sort of compensate for these natural disasters,” said Brzoza.

They hope to have the sea turtle nest numbers out by the end of next week, but it will take some time as they check each nest one by one.

For beachgoers, the parking lot should open in a couple of days, and Bowman Beach Parking has already reopened.