As we enter Labor Day weekend, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the city of St. Pete Beach are issuing a warning to beachgoers. If you're heading down to the water this holiday weekend, be sure to follow the rules, and expect to see stepped-up enforcement. “Oh, we were just laying out here and saw a few of the cop cars just driving past on the beach,” said beach visitor Elasha Washington, already noticing the stepped-up patrol. “Well, at first, I was like, 'What are they doing out here?' But I guess it was to keep everybody safe to make sure everything was how it should be,” Washington said. “We've always had an influx of visitors on holiday weekends and, you know, we've had certain challenges in the past,” St Pete Beach Mayor Adrian Petrila said. Mayor Petrila says the goal is to help visitors stay safe and protect the area's natural resources, like sand dunes and turtle nests, already battered this month by Hurricane Debby. “We have a lot of challenges with protected species. We have the turtles, we have the skimmers, we have the sea oats. We just had a huge initiative this past weekend where we planted hundreds and hundreds of sea oats along the dunes,” Mayor Petrila explained. “And so, one of the things we want to make sure that people understand that we do have these protected areas, these protected species and that we want to protect our environment.” MORE: https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/pinellascounty/st-pete-beach-labor-day-weekend/67-7f0b76bc-cd63-4756-bf0f-66450efc6ed9