Summer 2016. Surf? Check. Sun? Check. Rip tides? Check. Sand? Not so much.
Instead of soft grains of warm sand shifting between their toes, many local beachgoers and visitors were surprised by a lack of sand and prevalence of slippery, algae-covered rocks on beaches throughout Malibu for much of the summer.
An unusually long period of high tides, high surf and pounding storms off the coast have stripped many favorite locations of their precious sand and sent it migrating.
Now, after almost eight weeks, the sand is returning to nearly normal levels.
“It’s always a very cyclical thing,” PADI Dive Master Instructor Carter Crary, who has run the Malibu Divers surf shop for years, said. “But I don’t remember the last time it went on for so long.”
It made a diving experience for Crary and his crew more challenging than ever. They had to brave the rocks to get out to the water’s edge. One of his dive masters even slipped and broke his ankle. Then, once in the water, it wasn’t quite the same. The dive crews encountered plenty of low visibility from “the constant churning of the waves.”
Surfers loved the high waves, “but they had to cross the rocks, too,” Crary said, “so it couldn’t have been fun for them either.”
Beach walks and activities were perilous in some places and swimmers had to be warned of the powerful rip currents.
If anyone knows about the migrating sand issues, it’s the residents of Broad Beach who have been hit hard over the years. Many have been greatly concerned about erosion around their beach houses.
So what’s the problem and why was it so much worse this year?
Chief Engineer for the Broad Beach Geological Hazard Abatement District Russ Boudreau knows all about sand migration and restoration.
“It’s a variety of things stemming from events last winter,” he said. “Even though we didn’t have a lot of rain from last year’s El Niño, there was plenty of action off shore and that stripped the sand. In fact, Broad Beach has been losing 35,000 cubic yards of sand per year.”
The situation became so bad that longtime A-list residents like Dustin Hoffman, Ray Romano and Pierce Brosnan joined more than 100 other property owners to remedy the situation by taxing themselves.
“This is the first project that has been privately funded,” Ken Erlich, legal counsel for the Broad Beach district, said. “We’ve seen projects like this on the East Coast, but they are publically funded.”
The price doesn’t come cheap. Residents have agreed to cough up $31 million and had to win the blessing of the California Coastal Commission.
The project involves trucking in huge amounts of sand from quarries in Simi Valley and Moorpark to recreate sandy beaches and dunes.
The hope is to restore the 1.1-mile ocean front to its former glory.
How long it will last is anyone’s guess.
“The pounding and winter storms continue to push sand out to sea,” Ehrlich said.
Boudreau says the project needs to be carefully monitored over the next 10 years. The proposed project consists of sand nourishment as well as dune restoration, sand backpassing — which means moving sand from wider reaches of the beach to narrower reaches of the beach — and retaining the existing rock revetment.
“If the sand gets stripped, you have the rocks as a last defense,” the engineer explained. Boudreau added that beaches up and down the coast weren’t always this “broad.”
“They were narrow beaches to begin with, and development just brought in more sand so they are vulnerable,” Boudreau aid. He added that more and more beach communities are looking for ways to replenish and restore the beach.
In the meantime, visitors and residents are invited to enjoy the sand while they can. Or, as 40-year wave watcher and longtime Malibuite Duane King said, “Don’t worry. The sand will come and go. That’s for sure.”
