Phil, talk to me about the turtle grass cleaning...I'm curious to see if its what I think you mean...

Topic - raking sea grass from the beach (not digging it out from the sea).
Most of our visitors prefer to see the beaches raked clean. Raking the beach has consequences - take a good look at the wheelbarrows of seagrass that are carried away and (depending on the skill of the raker) you may find that 50% of what is in the wheelbarrow is sand, not sea grass. A couple of years of this and you easily loose a few feet of land in front of your property --- we have neighbors who have lost a good 15 feet - maybe 20. Their "seagrass" has been taken to a nearby lot that used to be low and subject to flooding. That lot is now a sandy high piece of ground, and the sea is marching up towards the beachfront gardens.

When massive amounts of seagrass arrive after a big storm it makes sense to take the top layers off - that seagrass tends not to have too much sand in it, but for daily maintenance, there are better alternative ways to deal with this issue. Might take a bit more work, and supervision of rakers who would like to have an easier day of it, but .....
Some people dig a trench along the beach and put the seagrass in it, covering it with sand. This does not remove anything from the beach, and leaves it nice and clean. Another thing is that after weeds and brush are removed from the beach area, wind does it's share of erosion - you will find that your property develops dunes just back from the water's edge. By scooping up the sand that has blown away from the water and up into the "dune" you can simply cover the seagrass and have a clean looking beach and a relatively stable shoreline.

Never have any of these problems here in Del Boca Vista!

Bear. Diane nailed it.

Phil, Diane, thanks. Some of the explanation I had deduced and kinda figured out but some was quite surprising! Thanks again.

I don't believe I have never seen so many positive responses and suggestions on a topic of this importance. Dredging does have it's pros and cons but the bottom line is that it has it pros as well as it's cons.

I noticed a place some years ago just south of Caribbean Villas that was reclaiming the beach in a very simple, cheap and unique way. The property had lost so much beach frontage from tropical storms that the fence on the property actually came down. There was a jetty extending out about 100 feet perpenducular to the shore on the property line of Caribbean Villas and the one joining it on the south. A private residence but with about 200 ft of frontage.

There was a pier that had been concreted totally so it was in essence a jetty too extending about 75 feet or more out from the shore line. They filled some flour sacks with with a dry mixture of beach sand and cement and placed them from one jetty to the other about 30' or so from the beach. They stacked them until they were a foot above the water kind of like a sea wall.

The next small blow that came like they do every few months it was amazing to see how much sand gathered between the "sea wall" and the beach. Another blow or so and so much sand had gathered that it covered up the "sea wall" and it was no longer visible. Then they raised the "sea wall" about another foot and the next few blows covered that one.

They repeated this over a 6 or 12 month period and actually built or reclaimed over 30 foot of beach and it was up to 2 and a half feet deep. Amazing. Someone involved in that was taking pictures and sent them around to different people including Juan Allamillia on the town councel. Juan had some sort of supervision of the beach front and was going to follow up on that and see about building more beach front in a similar fashion. It seemed like a grand idea because it cost next to nothing and the sand that was reclaimed was that that was simply suspended in the water that the blow had picked up between the reef and the shoreline. No harm, no fowl.

Maybe Juan would have some information on that. It seems it would work all up and down the island restoring beaches cheaply and with no harm or dredging. Seems worth a try.

Interesting stuff again Glorias. I'm curious did anyone try to evaluate what happened to the beach area on the down current side of the seawalls? My wife was trying to explain some issues with currents and tidal geomorphology (changes in land and sea bottom due to tides currents etc) and how they can increase beach loss in those areas.

Bear,

There are definitely some ramifications to this but it was developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the East coast of the US and is pretty sound. There is some trial and error to the procedure and even the Army corps cannot get it right every time. There was no noticable problems in the case in point but the process works gradually so there is time to reverse and stop any negative effects in any particular situation. This would be dynamite if the town officials would just engage.

The system described is called a groyne. Not new or unique at all but in the right conditions it is remarkably effective. Different locations work differently due to sand source & currents --- should one decide to use such a system it might be helpful to begin small and see the results before jumping in whole hog and possibly making things worse instead of better.
After all --- the island was growing bit by bit all by itself before we got here .....
PS - a friend of mine had one in Placencia that worked very well indeed - she was sued by an neighbor who felt it was a bad idea, was forced by the Supreme Court to remove it --- and the properties both north and south of the groyne lost significant beach. Then again, Placencia is built of river wash not coral sand.

Diane,
Interesting. Did the folks in Placencia have the jetties on each end? That is a big key. I'll try to come up with some photos of the one I'm speaking of in a day or so. I do know that in this instance the properties on either side lost no beach even though the one in question did gain significantly.