Students' Traveling to the South Coast Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Students' Traveling to the South Coast - Essay Example The Brighton Marina is the biggest complex of its kind in Europe and testifies to the great engineering skills of modern times which have converted what was an open sea 40 years ago, into a commercial and residential settlement. The coastline from Brighton to Eastbourne is a delight for any coastal engineer, and I am no exception, for it features almost all the important innovations of coastal engineering, along with old and new techniques used in the preservation of the beaches and harbors, endangered by natural and human encroachment. In other words, such a place is an engineer’s delight! Walking along the Brighton Marina is an exhilarating experience and I was once again struck by the way in which this development has been made possible. Economic activities and urbanization though, have had some very adverse effects on the environment and coastal erosion is the cause of great concern. The Brighton Marina caused depletion of the beaches because it altered the longshore drift, and Seaford that was already suffering from erosion was further affected. The Groynes had been built as early as 1836 to combat this problem and increase the amount of shingle. A groin can be built of wood, concrete or rocks, which are placed at right angles to the sea, and help to create a wider and well-nourished beach, since it catches the shingle on the up drift side, and protect the coast because the filtered sand absorbs the wave energy. But there is the loss of beach material on the downdrift side creating the need for another groin there. At Brighton, a seawall and promenade were built at the foot of the cliffs in the 1930s, with the seawall constructed of concrete blocks and the space between the wall and the cliff was packed with the chalk rubble, which was removed from the cliff, while constructing the wall.