January, 2015, attention-getting item on the shore:
- Yellow push-up
- See-thru top
- Big front end
- Name tattooed on left hip: ‘Cat’
Beauty/beast adding nourishment to North Topsail Beach, NC.
Five miles of beach are getting “renourished,” or having sand pumped from the Atlantic Ocean seabed to widen the beach as well as the meager dunes, all in the name of protecting our shore from damaging storms. Local money is being used; once the project is completed federal funds will be available to restore the beach to its newly-built dimensions if a named storm causes erosion.
In a wider photo below, a blip on the horizon at the right edge is the barge pumping sand from the seabed about a mile off the coast. The berm of newly-pushed sand to the right is a temporary barrier to trap the new sand and water on this section of the beach; it gets flattened when work here is completed.
The hump between the two distant ‘dozers is the sand/water slurry rushing out of pipes laid from barge to beach. As water washes out of this and the new sand settles, the machines build the dunes and extend the beach.
Get the feel of the action from my YouTube video by clicking inside the picture below, which you can view full-screen by clicking on the brackets [ ] at the right end of the bar at the bottom of the video.
"Across My Spectrum" 