connected by one big sandbar<\/a>. It has not always been like this.<\/p>\nSince all the hurricanes, beach renourishment projects, and Mother Nature worked together to form this. The result is closing Blind Pass for now.<\/p>\n
Nathan Mallon has seen a sandbar before, but usually he has to wade out in the water first to get there. Monday, all it took was a quick walk in the sand.<\/p>\n
“This one is much bigger. It’s pretty cool,” Mallon said.<\/p>\n
It started as a beach renourishment project on Captiva. In January, the Captiva Erosion Prevention District posted that part of their project was done.<\/p>\n
Two months later, Mother Nature did some renovating. Before this sand formed, people would usually be up to their waists in water at this location.<\/p>\n
For some, it may look like you can wade in the water there. Don’t be fooled, you are still asked not to swim there.<\/p>\n
The sand isn’t the biggest difference you’ll see. Mallon and his cousin walked away with a bag full of shells on the Sanibel side, but on Captiva, the shelling has been less successful.<\/p>\n
Ashley Brown and her family from Iowa say their search for shells has not been as successful this year.<\/p>\n
“When we came last year, I have a video. Like the shells were everywhere, like you could just pick them up, like buckets of them, and there’s obviously shells,” Brown said.<\/p>\n
So will Blind Pass stay closed? The short answer is no.<\/p>\n
The county’s policy says it needs to have an open pass, but that’s going to take some time.<\/p>\n
A county spokesperson tells WINK News it will do much-needed dredging, but that likely won’t be until 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANIBEL, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 Two barrier island beaches are now connected, and it’s not by a bridge. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,11949,28,90829,90830,15471,90831],"class_list":["post-195728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-coastal-geography","tag-florida","tag-hydrology","tag-physical-oceanography","tag-sanibel","tag-shoal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}