All in a Day’s Work at the Beach

The late afternoon sea was flecked with whitecaps, and the purple flags snapping in the brisk wind meant there was a danger of Portuguese man-of-war in the water. But for the moment, Stephen P. Leatherman only had eyes for the sand between his toes.

“It’s a 3.5 in terms of color. Not pure white, but an off-white, light in color,” declared the barefoot professor from Florida International University as he ambled along the shoreline at Crandon Park, a public beach near Miami. “In terms of softness, it’s pretty soft, but there are all these cobbles and pebbles. That takes away from the score.”

Leatherman, a coastal scientist who has taken the tongue-in-cheek alias “Dr. Beach,” has gained national notice through his proposition that America’s beaches -- like wines, restaurants, golf holes, cars or places to live -- can be rated with scientific objectivity and mathematical precision, then ranked to sift out the best.

Every Memorial Day weekend, Leatherman issues his list of 10 top family beaches in the United States, a group that he maintains guarantees “a memorable summer vacation.”

Some in the tourism industry say that making this increasingly cited list is akin to having a stock touted in the columns of the Wall Street Journal or a vintage lauded by Wine Spectator.

In 2002, Dr. Beach proclaimed Port St. Joseph Memorial State Park in Florida’s Panhandle -- with its fine, sugar-white sand and high dunes -- to be America’s finest.

“As the publicity went from Buffalo to Baton Rouge, many people made side trips to visit, mentioning the ranking we’d received,” said Anne Harvey, park manager. “There are now 185,000 visitors a year, which is an increase of 100% over the past eight years. [Leatherman] certainly had an impact on us.”

“Absolutely it helps,” said Carolyn McCormick of North Carolina’s Outer Banks Visitors Bureau. “People rely on books and magazine articles and the recommendations of other people when they travel, and many people rely on those lists.”

Tourism officials on the popular chain of barrier islands are hoping efforts to repair extensive hurricane damage are completed in time to impress the Florida professor. In September, Hurricane Isabelle whipped through Hatteras Village and Ocracoke Island, destroying 146 hotel rooms, slicing Hatteras Island in two by creating a half-mile-long inlet and imperiling the $600 million-a-year tourism industry.

“It’s more important than ever to make the list this year,” McCormick said.

Leatherman’s methodology employs a five-point grading scale and 50 distinct criteria, from width at low tide and sand quality to smell, lifeguards and crowds. His subjects are the 650 major public recreational beaches that he has identified from the Eastern Seaboard to the Hawaiian Islands.

“I’ve been to all the beaches in the U.S. once, and some many times,” said Leatherman, 56, who received a doctorate in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia and is director of Florida International’s coastal research laboratory. On average, he visits 100 beaches each year, and tries to see all likely candidates for the top 10.

“He does look at the beaches. He’s been here many times,” Harvey said. McCormick recounted that Leatherman was nosing around the Outer Banks the week before Isabelle struck. “He does his homework,” she said.

His perennial high scorers tend to be in Hawaii, Florida, California, North Carolina, the eastern tip of Long Island in New York and Cape Cod, Mass. Once a beach is proclaimed No. 1, it is retired from the competition.

California beaches, Leatherman said, generally have several strikes against them. The water rarely warms to more than the low 60s, the surf is rough and the crowds often are enormous. The sand contains feldspar, magnetite, garnet and other heavy minerals and is dark. The water may be dirty, and there are often eyesores to mar the view. Venice Beach may be the best known expanse of sand on Earth thanks to “Baywatch,” Leatherman said, but the TV series had to be carefully photographed so as to not show the outfall lines that carry storm water into the Pacific.

All the No. 1 picks since Leatherman began his annual rankings in 1991 have been in Hawaii or Florida, where the professor finds the warm, clean and clear waters especially welcoming for ocean bathing. Last year’s national winner was Kaanapali Beach on Maui. Although they have never been his top selections, Leatherman does like Santa Rosa, Calif., for its seaside amusement park and Venice Beach for its unrivaled “funky” diversity of human fauna.

“There is no better beach in the U.S. to see and be seen,” he said.

The worst public beach in the United States, in Leatherman’s opinion, is also in California: Border Field State Park in San Diego. Raw sewage pumped into the ocean from neighboring Mexico fouls the coastal waters so badly that the beach often is closed to swimmers. There are no lifeguards. However, it is an excellent place for horseback riding, Leatherman said.

The course of Dr. Beach’s life was preordained at age 4 or 5, when his father purchased and dumped a truckload of sand into the yard of their Charlotte, N.C., home. The young Leatherman, who hadn’t yet seen the sea, was captivated by the mutable stuff.

“I love sand,” he said. “That’s why I got into beaches.” He belongs to an international society of sand collectors.

A favorite activity with his 12-year-old son, to whom Leatherman gave the middle name “Beach,” is building sandcastles and battling the rising tide as waves demolish their handiwork. The professor and his wife, Debbie, a synchronized swimmer, also have a 13-year-old daughter nicknamed Sandy.

Leatherman himself doesn’t live on the beach, but in an inland Miami suburb where the public schools are good. He doesn’t particularly like lazing on the beach, instead enjoying more active pastimes such as boogie boarding, snorkeling and beachcombing.

“Ah, back in the element,” Leatherman said as his bare feet touched the sands of Key Biscayne after a day on the Florida International campus. Back when he was teaching at the University of Maryland, Leatherman said, colleagues made clear that it would be a good idea to remove the sign he put on his office door that read “Science can be a day at the beach.”

Leatherman has either written or edited 16 books, including “Dr. Beach’s Survival Guide: What You Need to Know About Sharks, Rip Currents & More Before Going in the Water,” penned more than 200 scientific journal articles and technical reports, spoken at more than 100 national and international scientific conferences and given expert testimony before Congress.

“My hat is off to him because he has been able to take his science and melt it down to what the average person is looking for in terms of a beach vacation,” McCormick said. “Most people seeking a beach are seeking the same things Dr. Beach is looking for.”

In his academic guise, Leatherman is working on a mapping project using an airborne laser -- he calls it his “million-dollar toy” -- to construct 3-D images of beaches that are accurate to within inches, to better measure the effect of storms and erosion and determine whether artificial beach replenishment is needed.

“We need to better understand how beaches are changing,” Leatherman said. “The economic implications are huge. Usually for a beachfront community, how the beach goes, so goes the economy.”

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Shore delights

In 14 years of compiling his annual ranking of the country’s public beaches, Stephen P. Leatherman has visited much of the American shoreline from the Atlantic Coast to Hawaii. Here are some of Leatherman’s favorites:

Best beach for nightlife -- South Beach, Miami Beach, Fla.

Best surfing beach -- Huntington Beach

Best beach for walking -- Kiawah Island, S.C.

Best wilderness beach -- Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park, Wash.

Best sports beach -- Kailua Beach Park, Oahu, Hawaii

Best small-town beach -- Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Best city beach -- Santa Cruz

Best people-watching beach -- Venice Beach

Best overall beach -- Kapalua Bay Beach, Maui, Hawaii