Beach Renourishment at Edisto Beach

We stopped by Edisto Beach State Park in SC.  This is a cool beach, because you can always find shells here.  Unexpectedly, they were just done doing a beach renourishment project, where they dredge sand from the ocean floor and pump it up on the beach.

(The Edisto Beach website has some more information on this project, including scope, numbers and cost estimates.) Looking at the enormous amount of sand they put on the beach, one can see that it was an extensive - and expensive - lot of work.  Here, you can see the plateau of sand to the left, about 8-10 feet higher than the shoreline.  This sand extends to the left about 300 feet. 

They used a lot of heavy equipment to move the sand, and the huge pipes that delivered the sand from the offshore dredges.  No equipment was left on the beach, but you can see the pipes in the distant right side of the picture.

Here are some of the dredge pipes, with a full grown Berkshire Mountain Poodle for scale.  They're about 3 feet in diameter.

 The pipes were VERY thick plastic, and 500 feet long.  Because I'm extraordinarily gifted with balance, I walked on top of one the pipes :-)

So, man's best efforts to control and modify nature... but here, you can see the erosion "cliff line," where the sea is already reclaiming the sand, and putting it where Mother Nature wanted it to be.

A pretty good sized jelly fish.  We threw it back in, hope it was able to stay out in the ocean.