Turning over a new reef: AI could help save beaches

As a super El Niño intensifies in the Pacific Ocean, coastal beach erosion is devastating Southern California and beyond. But concrete reef structures powered by artificial intelligence could help to combat the environmental crisis. They can help beaches recover and even predict future erosion patterns.

Methodology

Born from a lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the company Coastal Assembly uses AI along with satellite and ocean data to “predict coastal erosion patterns and create submerged structures that harness currents to coax the beach back,” said The New York Times. It has placed 54 marine-concrete artificial reef structures near the JW Marriott Maldives Resort & Spa, helping the ocean “build about 90 feet of new beach in six months,” said AccuWeather.

After two years, the beach has now “doubled in size,” and the artificial reef is “filled with new coral and marine life, from fish to sea anemones,” said Fast Company. The usual solution to coastal erosion is to “dredge sand to try to replace what was lost.” But that “works only temporarily, and it harms marine ecosystems.” Coastal Assembly’s method has the “potential to aid communities in adapting to climate change by reducing the time and cost of complex coastline modeling and predicting the areas most vulnerable to erosion,” said the Times.

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Challenges

The artificial reefs are custom. It’s not “one-size-fits-all because every beach has a different bathymetry [underwater landscape],” said Coastal Assembly co-founder Skylar Tibbits to Fast Company. It has “different wave conditions” and “complex parameters that make each beach unique.” In addition, the “dynamics of coastal erosion are complex,” said the Times. Sand and sediment are “always eroding and accumulating with seasonal currents,” and rising sea levels can contribute to more coastal loss.

Time will tell if artificial reefs can be a long-term solution. Beaches are “our primary natural defense to backshore erosion and coastal flooding,” said coastal geomorphologist Adam Young to AccuWeather. "Without that sand buffer, waves have less distance to lose energy before reaching roads, homes and bluffs.”