This sand/beach issue has been discussed here for years. This particular link from June of last year discusses the beach accretion, which is the gaining of beach. On that single page of the thread, there are several pics of the exact same locations taken years apart, some showing more sand on the beach now than in the past.
http://negril.com/forum/showthread.p...ise#post161327
I agree with sunray that there are many factors to consider. Putting the word "erosion" in the title of the documentary may help with the number of people who end up watching it because as we all know, a house not burning down is not news - a burning house gets more attention. But to use erosion in the title may not paint an accurate picture of the situation. National Geographic uses the word "erosion" to describe how the Grand Canyon was formed. The Grand Canyon will never "un-erode". But beaches have an "erosion" that can reverse itself, essentially "un-eroding". Here is a quote from the link above for those who dont want to click on the link:
"Sand on any sea beach comes and goes depending on nature. As the article states, data used was collected between 2000 and 2007. It just so happens that from 2000 to 2005, the names of 18 devastating "named storms" were retired. That had never happened before in the history of weather keeping. And in 2005, there were so many named storms that the weather service ran out of names and started calling them Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Zeta. That again has never happened in the annals of weather keeping. With all that wave activity during those 6 consecutive years, it would be impossible for the Negril beach not to shrink in size.
But since then, the Atlantic storms have returned to their normal historical trends, allowing the beach to gain in size, which is called accretion. And as for the sea level rise, there has been one world wide - the first real satellite data collected from 1993 to 2010 shows a world wide gain of 3 millimeters. In the actual world map shown below, you can see for yourself where the sea level has risen the most. And please look very carefully around Negril, the sea level has either shown no increase at all or has actually decreased by a millimeter or two."
Back to the present, we were walking the beach the other day and as people went into the water, they got about shin deep but when they reached between 10 to 20 meters out, it became ankle deep. There was a sand bar forming, and that sand can be pushed by the wave action back to the beach, which is what beach accretion is all about. Beaches can and do "un-erode".
There is a lot to consider for this documentary and look forward to seeing it!
Originally Posted by Rob
