Stop Vertical Seawalls

The truth about vertical seawalls is that they don’t protect the beach. They may shelter developments and infrastructure behind the wall but the beach in front is lost to accelerated erosion.

Beaches naturally use their dunes to replenish sand and recover from erosion events. Sandunes are nature’s seawalls, they act like the precious lungs of the beach … breathing in and out with the tides.

For the vast swathes of Australia’s uninhabited shoreline, it’s a dynamic, natural process. But when humans build vertical seawalls to protect private property, they harden the coast and remove its ability to recover naturally.