Beach Repaired: Is It Good Or Bad? Your Thoughts

A follow up to the beach erosion I posted about Wednesday evening. There has been a strong onshore flow since the weekend, and it resulted in breaking up part of the beach and pushing what appeared to be a river between the coast and the dunes, splitting the beach in half. Gina Aubel sent me these two images perched from 17 floors above the northern end of Ocean City between 116th and 119th streets. She showed the breach of the beach Wednesday afternoon, followed up by the repair and smoothing of the sand seen the morning. The beach combers were out overnight. All better, right?

There are a few ways to look at this. Some say it is normal and no big deal. But lifeguards have not been letting people in the water due to high rip current danger. Regular visitors and property owners want to maintain the status quo. Maintain the beach and fight back the ocean’s onslaught. I get it. I have family going to Sun Fest this weekend and they want to enjoy as much of the sand as possible. But some see the build up on the beach as tempting fate. I have seen comments stating that is inevitable for a barrier island will be subjected to storms and erosion. This has nothing to do with climate change or sea levels, but just the normal cycle of costal storms and evolution of the coastline. An environmentalists point of view would be to let nature do what it wants because it will win eventually.

I can go deeper, but I just wanted to hear your thoughts. I share this view as we enter the weekend with Sun Fest and a large coastal storm colliding, knowing that there was a fix might ease some concerns. What do you think? I really would like to know. Please share your comments here or on my social media sites you found this article. Also see the recent Ocean City posts below.

A new inlet in Ocean City? Let’s hope not. Images from Wednesday Sep 23

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