By John Haughey
The Center Square
April 6, 2020
A few scattered Florida beaches remain legally open with restricted access while others across the state permit activities such as walking and exercising.
A Scripps Institute researcher is warning governments to keep people off all beaches because the same breeze-salted spray from breaking waves many cherish could be tainted with coronavirus – and infectious beyond 6-foot social distancing protocols.
“It’s not going to kill you” to avoid the beach during the COVID-19 pandemic, “but it could if you go out there and get in the wrong air,” said atmospheric chemist Kim Prather, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry on the Environment in La Jolla, Calif.
Prather told The Associated Press she fears SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is filtering into coastal waters similar to the way bacteria, pathogens and effluent do when washed into waterways and, eventually, the ocean, by heavy rains.
The ocean’s tidal sway and shifting currents churn particulate and microscopic pathogens that are aerosolized atop shore-broken waves and sprayed into the air on the beach and beyond.
Prather said SARS-CoV-2 is a “hydrophobic” lipid membrane. As a fat, it ascends to surfaces, is buoyant enough to hover and travel further through the air than first thought, she said.
Foam and bubbles left in a wave’s wake contain “all that stuff – the viruses, the bacteria, pollutants, all the gooey, oily stuff,” she said. The surf “just launches it into the air.”
Prather, whose research is backed by a $40 million National Science Foundation grant, said the 6-foot distancing protocol is inadequate on the beach.
“The signs tell you don’t walk on the beach, don’t swim, don’t surf, but nobody tells you: ‘Don’t breathe,’” she said.
Most Florida beach closures preclude sunbathing, swimming, picnicking and activities that congregate people. Many, however, do not prohibit jogging, dog-walking, beach-combing and other transitory activities.
The sanctions were imposed to curtail their crowd appeal, not because beaches themselves, even empty, could be dangerous.
Nearly all local beaches have been placed off-limits by county and municipal governments, although those in several Panhandle counties, where relatively few COVID-19 cases are reported, remain open, including Dixie and Levy.
Volusia County Thursday made its beaches off-limits but, on Saturday, loosened restrictions to allow walking, jogging, biking, fishing, surfing and swimming on county beaches, including Daytona Beach. Sitting and sunbathing are still not allowed, the county website states.
Monroe and Brevard County beaches remain open in unincorporated areas to residents only without restrictions other than maintaining distancing protocols.
The resident restriction is enforceable on the Florida Keys, but not so in Brevard County, say 16 mayors in requesting county commissioners close beaches to all activity but walking, jogging, biking, fishing and surfing.
All state beaches and parks are closed. In issuing his statewide “safer-at-home” directive, Gov. Ron DeSantis did not shut down local beaches, although he closed Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade county beaches by executive order a week earlier.
DeSantis must declare all beaches off-limits, say two North Florida attorneys who filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction requiring the governor to do so Wednesday.
Gaultier Kitchen and Daniel Uhlfelder maintain DeSantis’ “safer-at-home” directive is vague and does not close the beaches.
“What the governor says about his order” is not “necessarily in the order. There is just too much ambiguity in the whole thing,” Kitchen said.
DeSantis’s lawyers say the lawsuit is based on a “baseless assertion,” that the governor should not be deposed by Uhlfelder during an emergency and asked it be dismissed.
I believe this chemist would need to first prove that the ocean is a host of covid-19. Her studies are about contaminated ocean water sending contaminated sea-spray into the air. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29789621
I agree 100% Kris. So far there is no evidence that covid-19 survives in saltwater. Besides, it would have to get into the ocean first through a contaminated run-off that bypasses our water processing systems that kills the virus. Add to that the likelihood that there would be enough covid-19 in the run-off AND that it happens to be in the sea-spray after being diluted by the vast ocean AND that you happen to breath in those particular droplets, and the odds are practically zero. I think we all need to weigh these nearly negligible odds versus the health benefits of walking, jogging and bicycling on the beach which are proven to improve your immune system and help fight the virus. I can understand why we wouldn’t want to open our beaches for gatherings, but we can easily restrict loitering and still allow for exercising instead of making our paths more congested and putting us at a more likely risk of exposure than sea-spray.
Our sidewalks, paths and roadways are filled with people exercising. Not sure how “safe” we are with all of the congestion. I’d prefer to see our beaches open to residents for exercising only. We need this for mental health as well as physical health.
Absolutely.The benefits of walking on the beach outweigh the risk. Obviously, there is greater risk going to a grocery store then walking on the beach.
And yet the Marriott & Ocean Hotel on Sadler has had their pools filled with 10-15 people in their pools all week. Obviously NOT practicing Social Distancing.
Better stop washing our hands and shut down the city water system. I hope that this scientist is not publicly funded.
Volusia and Brevard’s allowances and restrictions are a nonsensical mishmash. To recap. You can fish on the beach but you can’t sit on it. You can surf but you can’t swim. So, if the fisherman sits in a chair while fishing does that count as sitting on the beach? And you can surf but not swim? These are the most idiotic rules I’ve seen yet. Close the beaches to all, no exceptions. It’s totally asinine to think someone fishing is any safer or less of a threat that someone sitting in a beach chair watching or that a surfer is any less likely to be carrying the bug and spreading it than someone swimming. These rules are arbitrary, capricious and discriminatory.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-ocean-swimming-surfing-safe-beaches-los-angeles
This is a scientist at a world wide regarded marine research institute. What she’s saying makes tons of sense. The Covid 19 virus is incapsulated in a lipid (fat). Fats float on top of water. Imagine an oil and vinegar dressing. You can’t turn it into a solution. The oil will always separate and rise to the top. People who think that saltwater or freshwater, for that matter, dilute the virus so much that it’s harmless don’t understand the dynamics of fats and water. The virus can’t be diluted anymore than the oil in the oil and vinegar dressing. It just doesn’t work that way.
Joe Palmer, the Volusia rules were clarified; swimming is included as “allowable exercise”. Fishing is allowable because it’s done to obtain food. No chairs and umbrellas, no organized sports rule is to lessen the attraction for visitors and partiers. The public beaches should be open to the public for exercise and fishing, absolutely.
Frankly, even a moron could toss out an unbacked story-line that with everyone washing their hands, and with waste water going down the drain, and people coughing outside while rain captures the viral load and rushes it into our lakes, rivers, and coastal surf zones, a terrible concentration of fatty, floating, and deadly viruses will immediately infect anyone who sets foot on a beach – or even breathes near one. That’s total bullshit. If it were true, staying off the beach wouldn’t help, since our entire island is clouded in misty salt spray.
It is inexcusable for anyone to attempt to terrify the population with such unjustified and damaging pseudo-science. Prather claims ““all that stuff – the viruses, the bacteria, pollutants, all the gooey, oily stuff,” she said. The surf “just launches it into the air.” – but she doesn’t offer ANY supporting DATA. SHOW ME ONE STUDY where samples of the water column through a variety of depths are sampled, plus surface skimmed samples from a variety of locations, plus a variety of filtered air samples at various times and distances from the shore, plus a handful of our municipal wastewater samples; then analyze all of the samples for COVID-19. With current research indicating that the virus may be viable in the air for several hours, and on steel or plastic surfaces for days, but on soft fabric surfaces for shorter periods (hours) – I have seen NO DATA about COVID-19 surviving in freshwater or saltwater, and I suspect that saltwater (or salt spray near a beach) would NOT be a hospitable environment for the virus.
I think Prather needs to stick to conclusions based on real scientific data – not scare stories to terrify people. If there is in fact a “risk” – remember that LIFE IS A RISK. Nothing we do is without risk, and it is the right and responsibility of the individual to choose to accept it or not. No government and no gaggle of pseudo-scientists or bureaucrats has any business micromanaging our lives. Open up the damn beaches!