Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge has four islands with ocean facing beaches: Bull, Cape, Lighthouse and Raccoon Key. The western arm of the Cape Beach often merges with Lighthouse island. Cape is 6.3 km long Cape, Lighthouse, Bull and Raccoon Key have highly erosional beaches with low elevations. However, since there is no beachfront development on these islands, turtles are able to place their nests in the dunes behind the erosional areas. Cape Island is the most significant loggerhead nesting beach north of Cape Canaveral with an average 1,000 nests per season. The beach is high energy, steep with coarse sand. Long sections of the beach consist of flat, wash overs and the nesting turtles tend to wander extensively in these areas.

In 2011, Cape Island breached into 3 separate islands. The northern most, largest island (North Cape, 6.3km) is surveyed daily. The southern most (South Cape, 1.52km) is surveyed when tide allows. The middle section is not currently surveyed as what is remaining is underwater.