Tropical Storm Bertha arrived during the historical peak of embryonic development for Gulf loggerheads. The storm stalled offshore, driving wall after wall of high surf directly against Franklin County's unarmored barrier islands. St. George Island lacks the high seawalls common in heavily developed resort towns, a design intentionality that normally makes it an ideal nesting haven. That open coastal morphology left eggs defenseless against sustained overwash.
Surge heights ran between three and five feet above normal astronomical high tides. Water did not simply wash across the wet sand; it surged up to the foredunes, flattening the gentle slopes where female turtles had chosen nesting sites weeks earlier. Developing turtle embryos breathe through porous eggshells. When saltwater covers a nest chamber for more than a few consecutive hours, the oxygen exchange stops, suffocating the entire clutch long before surf erosion physically tears the eggs from the sand.
For more than 12 hours, conservationists, vacationers, and local property owners watched the storm chew through marked boundaries. Wooden boundary stakes and predator-exclusion cages were snapped like matchsticks, scattering neon surveyor tape across miles of flooded coastal highway.
