Eve Butts has lived in Sandbridge for more than three decades, and visited often before that.
Over the years, one of her favorite beachgoing pastimes became watching the shorebirds that would flock to the area and poke around the shoreline, such as sandpipers.
“The shorebirds were always entertainment for us,” Butts said. “We would make up little stories about these birds and how they interacted, and it was just so lovely to see them.”
Several years ago, Butts said she started noticing fewer and fewer of them.
After doing some research, she thought the apparent decline could be linked to beach maintenance in Sandbridge that had started a few years prior.
A tractor regularly sweeps the beach to scoop up junk. But it also removes natural debris like seaweed that accumulates on the beach.
Butts learned about how this debris, called wrack, is a food source for migratory shorebirds and helps stabilize sand dunes.
“The wrack is actually our first line of defense,” she said.
She’s part of a group pushing to “Save the Wrack” — including Parks Atkinson and his wife, Andria.
“One of the things (the city) was thinking they were doing that was positive was picking up trash,” Parks Atkinson said. “But not only did it pick that up, it picked up all the positive things that nature has to make sure these birds stay and thrive.”
Virginia Beach has done similar beach maintenance at the Oceanfront since the mid-2000s, said Jim White, coastal program administrator in the public works department.
The city started beach grooming in Sandbridge in 2018 after a request by community leaders, he said.
It was established through an amendment to the Sandbridge Special Service District Ordinance, allowing funding for a few full-time and seasonal employees and equipment staged at Little Island Park.
The maintenance costs about $900,000 per year, funded through the community’s extra property tax rate.
White said the goal is to minimize trash buildup and grade the beach after visitors sometimes dig holes.
“It’s kind of like a little trash truck that is pulled behind a tractor, and it sifts about the top 2 to 4 inches to pick up cigarette butts, broken glass, any kind of plastic bottles, things like that.”
White said the staff “do everything they can to stay focused on just removing trash” and not overclean the beach.
The grooming and grading happens most days of the week from April 1 to Nov. 1, White said. It spans from the high tide line to the edge of the dunes.
The city does not have data about shorebirds. White recommended residents reach out to wildlife agencies or local scientists to see if any monitoring is underway.
Bryan Watts, a research professor and director of William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology, said in an email that the area between Virginia Beach and the North Carolina state line, including Sandbridge, is the region’s second-most important place for migrating shorebirds, after the Eastern Shore.
Two species are considered “beach specialists” in the area: sanderlings and red knots, he said. Both depend on “infauna within the surf zone,” such as mole crabs and coquina clams.
“They may poke around in wrack but it does not seem to be very important in terms of food source,” Watts said.
Several other species use the beach during migration. Ruddy turnstones seem to use wrack more than others, he said. The Ipswich sparrow, which winters along the coast, “does seem to use wrack quite a bit.”
In general, shorebirds prefer wild beaches to tourist beaches, he said, not just from wrack loss but also the impact of beach nourishment on invertebrates that burrow in sediment.
Biologist Krista Reed works for the Florida-based nonprofit Inwater Research Group, which has promoted the importance of beach wrack.
Reed said the region’s wrack is mostly made of sargassum from the Atlantic Ocean and seagrass from the Chesapeake Bay.
“When all of those things wash up, it creates kind of a perfect ‘fuel' for the beach,” she said. “It's really awesome for nutrient cycling. It helps feed all of the bird species and the invertebrates and everything in that community.”
Wrack also helps prevent erosion by collecting sand and “creating structure for that sand to stay,” she said. “It’s a very natural method that doesn't require any extra money, any kind of beach renourishment.”
But Reed, who grew up in Chincoteague, said she understands how the issue can be difficult for tourist communities.
White said the city has done annual surveys of dunes for about 20 years, and has not seen any acceleration of erosion in Sandbridge since grooming began.
In partnership with the federal Army Corps of Engineers, Virginia Beach typically does beach nourishment every five to seven years, he said.
Resident Andria Atkinson said she’d like to see the city shift away from grooming to other methods, such as picking up trash by hand, or eliminate maintenance outside of tourist season.
In the meantime, she’s working to educate neighbors about the issue, including by starting “Friends of Sandbridge Shorebirds.”
“We just need people to be aware.”
