Anna Maria Island is a drumstick barrier island that is the first barrier south of the expansive mouth of Tampa Bay. This island has been thoroughly developed, primarily with residential and small tourist facilities. The island has been fairly stable in its morphology over historical time, with the exception of significant beach erosion along the southern half or so of the island. This was remedied with a nourishment project in 1994.

The stratigraphy of Anna Maria was investigated in detail by Pekala (1996) who took 35 vibracores throughout the island and adjacent areas. He determined that the island was a maximum of 3,000 years old and has extended itself to the south only in the past few hundred years. The transect across the north end of the island is taken from his work and modified by Yale (1997). Miocene bedrock was not penetrated by any of the cores; it has been shown to be at a depth of about 11 to 12 m below the northern part of the island (Ferguson, 1997) where this stratigraphic cross section is located.

The basal unit recovered in cores is a brown, organic-stained Pleistocene sand. It is unconformably overlain by an organic-rich, muddy sand containing scattered shell debris which is interpreted to represent a vegetated paralic environment. Above this is a muddy and shelly sand that was probably originally deposited by swashover and/or washover processes and has subsequently been reworked extensively by bioturbation. Beach, nearshore, and dune deposits represent the island facies and are characterized by well-sorted sand and shelly sand. The prograding beach ridges on this end of the island are typical of drumstick barriers with beach and eolian components.