Disturbance: It’s A Way of Life in the Seashore

By Jimi Sadle

Canaveral National Seashore, Biologist

Occasional frost helps maintain open, sunny, saltwort-dominated marshes by killing back buttonwood and white mangrove trees. Photo credit: Jimi Sadle, Canaveral National Seashore

It’s September and the green sea turtles are still at it, trudging from the sea to nest –leaving craters and trenches and pits from their seemingly indecisive selection of the perfect spot in the dunes to deposit a clutch of eggs.

Dune plants, like sea purslane, sea oats and beach elder, are torn up, uprooted, reburied or left lying on the surface of the sand. I am not upset with the turtles for being turtles, nor do I feel sorry for the dune vegetation. It’s just the way this place works. And in the four short years I have worked at Canaveral National Seashore, one thing I have learned is that it changes all the time and that means it’s running well.

This past winter, freezing temperatures top-killed many acres of buttonwood and white mangrove trees, opening the understory for plants like salt wort and black sedge -- tipping the scales toward keeping salt marsh along the shores of Mosquito Lagoon for a little while longer.

A couple of years before the 2026 winter freeze, hurricane storm surge and dune overwash deleted miles of vegetation, leaving a blank slate for dune pioneer plants. Soon after, birds, such as Wilson’s plovers and black-necked stilts, were raising families while coastal dune sandmat and railroad vine were making flowers and seeds in the barren sandscape.

The most striking evidence of the temporary nature of the island system shows up in the ocean on some low tides in Playalinda. Trunks of black mangrove, still embedded in their dark peat soils, create a startling reminder that the ocean is now where the lagoon used to be.

Large or small, each disturbance event shapes the landscape, hindering some species while creating the opportunity for others to perform at their peak. The aggregate is what we see when we observe the natural features of the Seashore.



Whether you’re looking at the shell mound vegetation at Turtle Mound, the hammock along Castle Windy Trail, the mangrove shoreline at Eddy Creek or the dune vegetation adjacent to any of the boardwalks, you’ll see dead branches alongside fresh flushes of new green leaves. I personally find great pleasure in piecing together evidence in the plants and animals I see and trying to figure out why I think it looks the way it does. I hope you do as well!