Turtle plan may allow dredging to resume

Virginia Beach – Operation Big Beach, the massive beach rebuilding project, may resume Friday, federal officials said Wednesday after agreeing to a plan to ensure sea turtle safety. A dredger working in the Thimble Shoals channel off Cape Henry killed a fourth loggerhead sea turtle last week, halting temporarily the $20 million beach widening project. Loggerheads, members of a threatened species, actively feed at the bottom of the lower Chesapeake Bay at this time of year. Four was the upper limit of sea turtle deaths tolerated by the dredging contract before further safety steps would be triggered. This morning, a trawler owned by Old Point Packing Co. of Newport News will sweep the channel area, catching any turtles in a specially designed net. If any are caught, they’ll be tagged and moved to a new location several miles from the site.

The Army Corps of Engineers and REMSA, a private company licensed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, said that if the number is low, a decision will be made Friday on when to resume dredging, possibly immediately. The plan is to have the dredgers follow the trawler, which would scoop up the sea turtles and get them out of the way. The dredger’s powerful arms suck the sand into a hopper, then the vessel sails to an offshore connector and pumps it onto the beach. The decision to halt the dredging was difficult, officials said, because the beach is exposed to storm damage during the hurricane season.