Sand dredging @Samila Beach

[phuketsub]

I noticed a small barge appear at the south end of Samila (Chalathat ) Beach in Songkhla Town the other day and got curious about it, so I asked some of the workers.

It turns out they are dredging/pumping sand off the bottom of the beach and depositing in on the land. The work starts at about 8am and ends at about 10pm daily.

I can say for a fact that the water there is very shallow...you need to walk out about 30-40 meters before it starts to get deep.

The project, funded by the transport ministry, has two purposes:

1. Provide a channel for longtail boats off Kaosaen, just to the south.

2. Add more sand to parts of the beach where there is currently only rocks.

They said this project will likely last about 4 months.

I presume that is when the monsoon will start to kick in and very quickly restore the beach and offshore sandbanks to whatever state nature (and global warming) intended.

[Seastallion]

Isn't that "sand" on the sea floor quite silty and grey?

Not sure if it's suitable for re-covering the beach.

[phuketsub]

Isn't that "sand" on the sea floor quite silty and grey?

Not sure if it's suitable for re-covering the beach.

You make a good point. I was wondering the same thing...maybe they have the nozzle too far under the seabed?

I'll ask next time around and 'get to the bottom of it'.

[recom273]

They were doing it a few years back, bringing it by truck and dumping it around where they sometimes have a stage affair. I thought to build up a disappearing beach.

I also saw them dredging sand in several places in the south a long way out at sea, not small scale, several big ships and barges carting the sand away. Local 'farang' rumours were - it was Siam cement using it to mix cement off-shore - avoiding tax, loading the cement on barges shipping it off to Singapore.

I always thought there was too much salt content in the water / sand, so I'm sceptical on the rumours.

Would be interesting to find out what they do.

Also, same again when they were dredging off the mermaid .. why always late at night ? When I suggested they were building a beach i got strange looks, surely it would be pulled straight out to sea.

[phuketsub]

They were doing it a few years back, bringing it by truck and dumping it around where they sometimes have a stage affair. I thought to build up a disappearing beach.

I also saw them dredging sand in several places in the south a long way out at sea, not small scale, several big ships and barges carting the sand away. Local 'farang' rumours were - it was Siam cement using it to mix cement off-shore - avoiding tax, loading the cement on barges shipping it off to Singapore.

I always thought there was too much salt content in the water / sand, so I'm sceptical on the rumours.

Would be interesting to find out what they do.

Also, same again when they were dredging off the mermaid .. why always late at night ? When I suggested they were building a beach i got strange looks, surely it would be pulled straight out to sea.

Actually they did it last monsoon season as well, but this is obviously a much smaller scale project.

The attached pix were taken in September last year.

Seem like a novel approach to global warming.

Anyway, seems like lunacy to have to dredge all this stuff up after depositing so much there just nine months ago.

It's like a 'meta' version of digging a hole and filling it right back in again.

[impulse]

I kind of like the way they do their erosion protection. Seems pretty cost effective.

The big bags of sand keep the beach from eroding away back to the road, and every once in a while, they put a thin veneer of beach sand on top of the ugly bags to give the illusion of a natural beach. I don't get down often enough or for enough years to know the routine, but it seems to be pretty well coordinated to look good during the high season. (Or is it?- interested to hear some local feedback).

It does get pretty ugly, looking at the big bags before they lay down the thin layer, but I suspect it would be pretty expensive to keep up the fragile sand layer during the stormy season.