Beach restoration is underway again in Cancun after a delay caused by the recent bad weather that affected the area on November 5-7. Faced with the prospect of high winds and stormy seas, the project coordinators decided to move the dredger Kaishuu to the safety of a Gulf coast port. It set sail for the Mexican Caribbean as soon as conditions improved and resumed work last week. Sand is currently being dredged from La Ollita sandbank near Isla Mujeres and pumped on to Chac Mool beach in the vicinity of Plaza Forum.
A second and larger dredger called the Terranova arrived on Saturday from Dubai and has also begun work, increasing the total dredging capacity up to 80,000 cubic meters per day.
A spokesman for SEMARNAT, the Mexican Environmental Agency, also commented that dredging could begin on the Punta Norte sandbank near Cozumel this week, despite the last-minute efforts of an island conservation group to prevent it by taking legal action. The group is concerned about the effect that dredging will have on marine life, particularly conch. During its larval stage, conch buries itself in the sand to hide from predators.
The Beach Restoration projec
t was approved by SEMARNAT in the summer after years of studies by oceanographers, marine biologists and coastal erosion specialists and measures were included to minimize the impact on marine ecosystems. Moreover, the Cozumel sandbank and La Ollita have a collective volume of 42.5 million cubic meters of sand but only 6.5 million cubic meters will be dredged and experts are confident that sand will be replenished by natural marine sedimentation processes.
Environmental inspectors are carefully monitoring every step of the restoration process from dredging and pumping to the evolution of the beach profile to ensure that the project is fulfilling the conditions stipulated by the Environmental Agency.
Construction of the coastal barrier in the Punta Cancun area is also slated to start this week. The 350-meter-long breakwater will consist of concrete blocks measuring between 60 and 90 centimeters which will be shipped in over land once work is completed on this stretch of the beach.
Project engineers estimate that it will take about nine days for work to finish on the first stretch of sand in the Punta Cancun area and after that the dredgers will move along the shoreline, restoring the beaches south towards Punta Nizuc in the weeks to come. The Beach Restoration Committee is expected to meet tomorrow to discuss progress and as soon as we have more information and a timeline for when work will be taking place on the beaches in front of the Royal Resorts, we will post further updates.
