Mary Esther, FL Coastal Erosion Rate
Shoreline change 0.9 miles northeast of Mary Esther, FL
Good news, and an honest one: USGS's data can't distinguish this stretch, 0.9 miles northeast of Mary Esther, FL, from a flat trend. Whatever small movement it measured here is statistical noise, not a reliable direction, so none is claimed.
What this reading actually covers
USGS surveys the coast in transects spaced a few hundred feet apart; this page groups the nearest ones into a single ~3.5-mile reading for the stretch closest to Mary Esther, FL, rather than showing one arbitrary line. Segment center: 30.42, -86.65. Survey years: 2001, method LRR, from USGS's Gulf of Mexico shoreline-change assessment. That's how current the data is here, real, but not a live feed, since a shoreline survey is a major undertaking, not an annual check-in.
Where this fits nationally
This reading comes from 91 individual transects averaged together, 87% of which measured erosion rather than growth. USGS's confidence interval here is ±0.4 ft/yr. The unadjusted figure here, -0.18 ft/yr, would place it 521 of 1211 if ranked directly - but an unreliable rank isn't a useful one, which is exactly why "no significant trend" is the headline instead. Source: USGS Open-File Report 2004-1089. North Wildwood, NJ sits at national rank 1193 for growth (4.21 ft/yr), one reference point among the 1211 scored segments, 895 miles from here. 3 miles up the coast, Hurlburt Field, FL shows the same lack of a significant trend.
Mary Esther, FL on the source map: try the Coastal Change Hazards Portal, zoomable well past this page's ~3.5-mile grain.