Florida’s beaches draw millions of people here annually, and many who come from the middle of the country have never seen the ocean before. It’s a beautiful moment to see the face of someone who visits the beach for the very first time and sees its brilliant turquoise hue (in the less rainy months) and finds their first seashells. 

While patrolling the many stretches of our beautiful beaches here on the Island, turtle patrollers all seem to encounter one familiar scene: a freshly dug hole. The seemingly innocuous abandoned site is not only treacherous for nesting turtles, but also hazardous to those walking and running on the beach. You can help patrollers reduce the […]

At its spring quarterly meeting Thursday, May 5 the Gasparilla Island Bridge Authority had some interesting news about the traffic flow in recent days, particularly about two days this past March. GIBA Executive Director Kathy Banson-Verrico gave a report on the traffic passing through the toll booths during the first six months of the fiscal year. She reported that traffic numbers were up. Cash tolls were about 13 percent above the same time last fiscal year. Customer service tolls, or bridge passes, were up by about 10 percent, and overall traffic was up eight percent. She said this represented about 47,000 more vehicles than the number from the same period last year.