"We dredge the pass trying to keep it straight and in the same place, while nature wants to continually move and change." That line is from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's Clam Bay Mangrove Assessment, a study running from 1999 to 2025 and dated January 2, 2026. It explains a sight that has become familiar on the beach between The Strand and Clam Pass Park: heavy equipment that seems to arrive, leave, and return.
Clam Pass is meant to be dug out again and again. The inlet has no jetties or other hardened structures, so it shifts with every current and storm. Keeping it in one place is a recurring job, and the reason it gets done is the mangrove forest behind the dunes, more than the beach itself.
The only door Clam Bay has left
Clam Bay covers roughly 600 acres of shallow bays and mangrove swamp. The Conservancy describes it as the only coastal National Resource Protection Area in Collier County. It used to have more than one connection to the Gulf. In 1952, Vanderbilt Beach Road cut Upper Clam Bay off from Wiggins Pass to the north. In 1958, Seagate Drive cut Lower Clam Bay off from Doctors Pass to the south.
What remains is a chain of three very shallow lagoons, Outer, Inner and Upper Clam Bay. Clam Pass is the one channel that moves tide in and out of them. The Conservancy calls it a "semi-natural" pass. Before development, the pass would fill in over time and break open somewhere else, which is normal for a barrier island. A system boxed in by roads and neighborhoods can't safely let that happen.
A pass with a long maintenance record
The Conservancy's report traces the pass through decades of aerial photographs. The record shows the inlet swinging north and south between interventions, and dredging pulling it straight again.
| Year | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| 1999 | Extensive dredging, part of the response to the mangrove die-off |
| 2002 | Interior tributaries dredged |
| 2007 | Pass dredged, straightening the channel |
| 2012 to 2013 | Storms closed the pass, followed by an emergency dredge in 2013 |
| 2014 | Pass had moved north again |
| 2016 and 2018 | Further dredging, yet the pass returned to a northerly orientation |
| March 2022 | Dredged, then silted in after Hurricane Ian |
| Summer 2024 | Dredged and oriented northward, just before that year's storms |
| 2025 to 2026 | Post-storm excavation and beach, dune and mangrove restoration |
The last two rows matter most. The summer 2024 dredge came right before Tropical Storm Debby, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. Collier County later said those storms caused inlet shoaling, beach erosion, dune overwash and damage to mangroves. A pass dug open in mid-2024 needed major work again by November 2025.
Why the mangroves set the schedule
The reason for all this effort goes back to the early 1990s. The first clear signs of trouble in the Clam Bay forest came in 1991. About 5.67 hectares of black mangroves died in the northwest corner of the forest within six months of a new hard-surfaced road being finished. In 1995, a much larger die-off of about 20 hectares followed next to it. Heavy wet-season rain in 1992 and 1995 had left black mangroves underwater for two to six weeks, with soils saturated for more than four months. The Conservancy points to poor tidal exchange and water that sat too long as contributing causes.
The County's 1998 restoration plan responded the way the system still works today. It dredged Clam Pass and the interior channels and added hand-dug flushing channels so water could drain from the mangrove basins. The 2014 Clam Bay management plan reports that more than 90 percent of the original die-off area had grown back after 15 years. It also sets adequate tidal and freshwater flow as a standing objective, with regular monitoring of the pass to guide whether and where to dredge.
The recovery has been partial. The Conservancy's 2025 update says the four original die-off plots set up in 1999 are still classified as stressed or very stressed. One of them has gone through repeated cycles of recovery, erosion and dieback over 26 years. A dredged pass doesn't heal the forest. It keeps the forest from getting worse.
The forest's needs also decide who is in charge. County ordinance gives the Pelican Bay Services Division sole responsibility for advising the County on Clam Pass dredging and maintenance for mangrove health, and for managing that work for the County. County Coastal Zone Management handled much of it from 2008 to 2012. The Board of County Commissioners handed it back to the division in 2013.
What last winter's work actually changed
The 2025 to 2026 project is easy to remember as a sand job. Most of its effort went into separating sand from mangroves. Collier County announced that mobilization for the Clam Pass Park Sand Reclamation Project would start Monday, November 3, 2025. Equipment came onto the beach at Horizon Way in the City of Naples and was escorted to the work site at Clam Pass Park. The plan was to excavate shoaled sand from the inlet, place it on nearby beaches, restore dunes along about 2,000 feet, and restore mangroves damaged by the storms. The County forecast completion for late February or early March 2026. WINK News reported at the start that crews expected the work to take a few months.
The Coastal Advisory Committee packet from September 2025 estimated the proposed Clam Pass maintenance, dredging and reclamation at $434,758.50, including engineering, surveying and environmental monitoring. At the committee's January 8, 2026 meeting, members heard that dredging of the pass was complete. They also heard that about 3,000 mangroves had been planted behind the dunes south of the pass and just inside it, with some of the planted dunes standing about nine feet high.
The division's 2025 Clam Bay Annual Report, prepared by Earth Tech Environmental and dated March 24, 2026, explains the logic. Sand that Hurricanes Ian, Helene and Milton had pushed into the mangroves was dug out and piled into a dune along the eastern edge of the beach. That served two purposes: returning the buried mangrove areas to their pre-storm grade, and rebuilding a natural dune to shield them from future storms. The planting broke down this way:
- Four restoration areas just east of the beach, totaling about 5.10 acres
- 3,235 red mangrove and 65 black mangrove saplings
- Area 1 North with 320 red mangroves, Area 1 South with 400, Area 2 North with 335, Area 2 South with 700, and Area 3 with 50 red and 65 black
- New hand-dug channels cut on the east and west sides of each area so the new plantings flush with the tide
The report says plainly that some plantings may not survive. It recommends fixed photo stations and drone monitoring, with supplemental planting and channel work as needed.
The quieter work on the 2026 list
The dredge gets the attention. The annual report's recommendations show how much upkeep happens behind the dune line.
Earth Tech has mapped 13.98 miles of hand-dug channels in Clam Bay. In 2025 it maintained 1.91 miles, focusing on coastal channels hit by Helene and Milton. For 2026 it recommends 5.77 miles, roughly triple that. That includes 4.33 miles of Priority 1 channels along The Strand and near a stressed area labeled TH-5. It also includes 1.44 miles of Priority 2 channels along the tram berm, which the report says have not been maintained in recent years.
Behind Marker 36, Hurricane Ian wiped out most of the mangroves and buried the area in beach sand. Earth Tech cleared, regraded and replanted it in early October 2023 and planted sea oats out front later that month. Helene and Milton then destroyed the plantings on both sides of the building. The report, written in March 2026, expected more sand removal and planting there during the year. It also recommended that red mangrove propagules be collected within Clam Bay in summer 2026 and transplanted into the planting areas as needed, to supplement natural recruitment.
The seagrass numbers are the most striking in the report. Seagrass covered 5.61 acres of Clam Bay in 2016 and 3.55 acres in 2021. By 2024 it was down to 0.66 acres, and in 2025 it measured 0.12 acres. That is the lowest figure since Earth Tech began monitoring in 2015. The report recommends placing signs at the remaining seagrass shoal.
For paddlers, the Pelican Bay Foundation's paddling guidance already warns that Clam Bay is very shallow, with sandbars and potentially strong tidal flow near the pass and in the narrow creeks. That current is what the dredge exists to protect.
The next round is already in the budget requests
On September 10, 2026, the Coastal Advisory Committee's packet listed $500,000 for Clam Pass Dredging (Pelican Bay) among the County's Tourist Development Council grant requests for fiscal year 2026-27. It was the only inlet project in a request totaling $6,977,900. That is a funding request, not a construction date. Under the 2014 management plan, regular monitoring of the pass is what guides recommendations on whether and where to dredge.
For reference, when the committee approved dredges at Wiggins Pass and Doctors Pass in January 2026, County staff said those jobs had to be finished before May 1, the start of sea turtle nesting season.
In the meantime, Clam Pass Park at 465 Seagate Drive still begins with its three-quarter-mile boardwalk through the mangroves. Those are the same trees the dune, the channels and the next dredge are meant to protect.
If you own along Clam Bay or are weighing a home near The Strand, Mary can walk you through how the pass, the dune line and the Pelican Bay Services Division's work shape that stretch of beach, and she'll give you a candid answer to whatever else is on your mind. Mary Wolleon is glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
