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NAVARRE BEACH - The state has canceled plans for a marine sanctuary here because of a number of drownings off the Florida Panhandle, including 18 this year.
Department of Environmental Protection officials have recommended that money allocated for the sanctuary at Navarre Beach State Park instead go to lengthen a nearby fishing pier in this barrier island community.
"In light of the recent drownings and given the fact that people will have to swim out to the marine sanctuary and swim back, we don't feel it is in the best interest of the public to build the marine sanctuary," DEP spokeswoman Kathalyn Gaither said Thursday.
The state is in no position to assume liability for such deaths, most attributed to rip currents, DEP interim director Mike Bullock wrote in a letter to Santa Rosa County Administrator Hunter Walker.
A fast-flowing rip current occurs when water from waves or swells returns to the sea through a break in a sandbar. Swimmers sometimes panic and fight the current instead of swimming parallel to shore to get out of it, become fatigued and drown.
Nearly all the Panhandle drowning deaths also have occurred at beaches without lifeguards. None of the state parks in the region are guarded.
Plans had called for putting artificial reefs and rock piles in the Gulf of Mexico off the park, which is under construction and not yet open. Santa Rosa County commissioners will try to revive the sanctuary in a meeting next week with DEP officials and state Rep. Ray Sansom, R-Fort Walton Beach. The county donated 130 acres worth at least $20-million for the park on Santa Rosa Island, where 22 of the deaths have occurred over the past three years.
Brenda Stokes, a Navarre diving enthusiast, said worries about the sanctuary are unfounded.
"How many times have you heard of someone drowning when they were wearing a snorkel and fins or diving gear?" she asked.