<span style="font-weight: 400;">A punishing combination of near record king tides, strong onshore winds and pounding surf carved away dunes and damaged beach access structures up and down Vero’s barrier island last week, leaving stretches of shoreline from Wabasso Beach to Humiston Park visibly battered.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">“This was a significant erosion event,” Quintin Bergman, Indian River County's coastal resource manager, said of the beach erosion. “The concern was not the king tide by itself, but the combination of elevated tides, persistent onshore winds, and wave energy acting on the shoreline for several days.”</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">The beach at Treasure Shores Park on the northern stretch of the island was littered with timbers on Saturday and both beach access points at Wabasso Beach Park were closed, with shattered sections of railing hanging off the ramp that leads down to the sand. </span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Surging white water deluged the bottom section of the ramp and the beach access stairs at high tide. With waves as high as eight feet, a steady procession of surfers scrambled over 2x4s and orange netting that blocked the stairs and ramp to plunge into the turbulent water.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">In Central Beach, the southern section of the Conn Beach boardwalk was undermined and closed, with washed out areas eating into the edge of Ocean Drive. Unstable stairs leading up to the boardwalk and from the boardwalk to the beach were blocked off by city workers.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">At Sexton Plaza, there was no beach at high tide, with waves crashing against the sea wall and washing far up among the pilings that support the historic Ocean Grill restaurant.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">County officials reported 15 to 20 feet of dune retreat at some beaches last week, resulting in sheer sand cliffs in place of sloping dunes. </span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">For residents living along the oceanfront, the changes have been striking. “We walked the beach and ... there is very little beach to walk after this storm,” said Jill Hulsing, a Vero Beach resident with an oceanfront condominium near Humiston Park.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">The damage was made worse by the already denuded condition of many island beaches. A county report issued in April found that nearly 90 percent of the barrier island shoreline is critically eroded.”</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">A critically eroded shoreline is one “where natural processes or human activity have caused or contributed to erosion and recession of the beach or dune system to such a degree that upland development, recreational interests, wildlife habitat, or important cultural resources are threatened or lost.”</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">The Beach Preservation Plan Update found that a three-mile section of shoreline that includes Central Beach was in the worst shape.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">“I've worked at Ocean Grill since 1986,” said Heather Sanders, gift shop manager at the restaurant overlooking Sexton Plaza. “The water keeps creeping closer, but we've weathered these events before, and people still love coming here to watch the ocean.”</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">On Saturday, the railing overlooking the beach beside the Ocean Grill was lined with locals and tourists who had come to beach not to swim but to watch the awesome power of the ocean surging against the island.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Whether the event established any records remains unclear. Bergman said the county doesn’t yet have the historical water-level data necessary to make that determination.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">“Our next step is to document what changed and determine where the beach can recover naturally versus where some type of repair may be needed,” Bergman said. “Some sand may move back toward the beach as conditions calm, but that will not rebuild an eroded dune. We need to understand the full beach profile and condition of the dune before deciding what restoration is necessary.”</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Neither the city nor the county has had time to estimate how much sand was lost, what repairs might cost or whether additional large-scale beach nourishment will be necessary. </span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Bergman said continued field observations and evaluations of infrastructure and recent beach-management projects should provide a clearer picture in coming days. Determining how much sand was lost from the full beach profile will take considerably longer and require underwater surveys.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Earlier this year, Indian River County completed an emergency nourishment project in Central Beach, placing approximately 116,000 cubic yards of sand and 117,500 native dune plants along the shoreline to repair damage done by hurricanes Ian and Nicole, which destroyed the Humiston Park beach boardwalk.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Much of that recently placed sand was washed away in recent days, leaving a steep sand face in place of a sloping dune at Humiston Park beach.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">But Bergman cautioned against interpreting the current erosion as evidence that the project failed. Beach nourishment is not intended to keep every grain of sand permanently in place. Sand naturally shifts with tides and storms, absorbing wave energy as it moves. The objective is to maintain a protective shoreline in developed areas where beaches can no longer migrate naturally. Engineers will evaluate how much of the restored beach and dune remains, where sand has moved and how effectively the project protected nearby infrastructure.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Without the additional sand and vegetation from the recent project, Central Beach would have entered last week’s event in a much more vulnerable condition, Bergman said.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">The erosion followed some of the year's highest predicted astronomical tides along Florida's east coast, commonly called king tides. But the tides were only part of the problem. Persistent northeast winds and elevated surf pushed waves repeatedly against the upper beach and dunes over several days, producing significant erosion without the direct impact of a named hurricane.</span> <span style="font-weight: 400;">King tides are caused by astronomical mechanics, when the gravitational pull of the moon, earth and sun align. The full moon that decorated Vero’s sky last week was beautiful to look at, but it also contributed to the high water, helping pull the ocean ashore.</span> <em>Photos by Joshua Kodis</em> [gallery ids="237995,237996,237997,237998,237999,238000,238001,238002,238003,238004,238005,238006,238007,238008,238009,238010"] <em>Staff writer Samantha Baita contributed to this report.</em>