Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Another beach mystery

A mystery to me - does anyone else know what's going on?

The beach at Umm Suqeim the other side of the fishing port from Burj Al Arab looks like this:



Piles of sand, earth-moving equipment, gangs of workers. I couldn't work out whether they were bringing the sand to the beach or taking it away.

But then I saw big bags being loaded with the sand, so I assume it's being taken away:



And a very large area features the ubiquitous red & white plastic - more of a symbol of Dubai than the cranes in my opinion:



So what we have is a large beach area coned off, piles of sand, earth-moving machinery, big bags.

The beach has been eroded along this stretch with the changing water movement caused by the offshore developments. I thought at first they were building it back up, but I'm not so sure.

Any ideas anyone?

3 comments:

nzm said...

Damn big bags!

They look like the type that are used for sandbagging during floods.

Maybe it's gonna rain bigtime in Dubai and they're getting prepared! :-)

Seriously, bags like this are also used during reclamation projects and are sunk to form part of a base on which to build.

Maybe they are finally going to construct the artificial surf reef first mooted in 2005 and discussed here, here and here.

Valerie said...

i've seen the same thing at the public beach recently, but i believe it is because they are creating a bike/in-line skate path... but this one is near the shore! Extending the beach perhaps? :)

Anonymous said...

project of the Dubai Municipality, they're adding more sand along the coastline as it is eroding over time. If you've been to Jumeira Open Beach, they also added more sand there since 2006, but before that the shoreline is just a few meters after the wall of the small kiosk/store (the middle one). The 'new' shoreline now is just the way it was in 1994.