Failed Seawall, Cabo Pulmo 2024

Seawalls and other forms of armoring or ‘hard’ stabilization are common responses to shoreline loss and coastal erosion. Seawalls can last for decades, but it depends on how they are built and what kinds of forces they are up against. It’s pretty common for a lot of seawalls to fail within a relatively short period of time. This image shows a stretch of beach in Cabo Pulmo that has seen a lot of erosion and numerous attempts to stop that erosion via seawalls and riprap. This particular seawall failed about a decade ago and its remnants have been sinking into the sand ever since. It shows one of the long-term and often unintended consequences of not-so-well-planned coastal armoring.

HIghway One in Big Sur (1926)

This is a photograph of Highway One in Big Sur from 1926. It was taken by the photographer Lewis Josselyn (1883-1964), who took thousands of great images of the Monterey and Big Sur region. He was also the official photographer for the Forest Theater in Carmel-by-the-Sea. I first learned about Josselyn’s work when I met the photographer and archivist Pat Hathaway in his little shop in Monterey around 1999-2000. Hathaway had an amazing and extensive collection of historical photographs. Now that he has passed away, this collection is now housed at the Monterey County Historical Society.

Site check: Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, California

Yesterday I had a chance to drop by Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz for a quick site check. Figure 1 shows what it used to look like here. In the photo from 1887, you can see the arch that used to be there. I love how people used to climb up onto those things and have their photograph taken for posterity. By 2006, the arch had collapsed and only a piece of it was still left. That bit of rock is still there today, but it’s worn down in the past 18 years. Here’s what it was looking like yesterday:

Figure 2. Steamer Lane, 8/26/2024. Photo by Ryan B. Anderson.

If you compare with the images in Figure 1, I wasn’t in the right spot. The horizon line is too high. I needed to move down just a little lower, and probably a bit to the left. The tide was rising and already at about 3.5 plus feet and banging around on those rocks, so that wasn’t possible. The lighting is also off—it looks to me like the 1887 and 2006 images were shot in the morning. And of course the I need to use a closer lens—I shot this with a 35mm lens and it looks like something around a 50mm would be much closer to the 1887 and 2006 images. So when I go back I need to make sure to get the tide, time, and lens right. Still, always good to get a chance to get out for a site check.

Location Scouting for the Coastal Rephotographic Project: Wilder Ranch

When Mark Klett and company undertook their ‘Third View’ project, they revisited and rephotographed 110 sites in the US west. I have a similar project in mind for the California coast, and one logistical issue will be choosing my own sites to revisit. Part of the decision-making rests upon the kinds of changes and stories I’d like to tell. Ideally, I’d like to have sites that exhibit a range of coastal landscapes, from those that have changed very little over time to those that have undergone extensive change (whether from natural forces, human intervention, or a combination of both).

A good place to start, of course, is locally. I’ve like the image of the old natural bridge at Wilder Ranch (Figure 1, left). This was taken around 1900 apparently. I’d like to find out who the photographer was, if possible. This image was included in the book by Griggs and Ross that I mentioned in my last post. They rephotographed the same site about 100 years later in 2006 (Figure 1, right).*

This one is easy to relocate and rephotograph, since I’ve been there several times in the past and it’s on a well-known coastal trail. I guess the main question is whether I’d like to lug along a view camera as well just for fun. I do like the idea of using relatively similar equipment for at least some of the sites I rephotograph…even though some of my friends and colleagues think this is kind of insane.

*Figure 1 comes from this post by good friend and colleague Gary Griggs.

Structural anthropologies

Some structural anthropology, but of a different sort:

There’s a place called Terra Mar.* It’s this point of land that sticks out into the sea. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, I knew it was covered with ‘fake’ rock or concrete. It just was. I didn’t really know why or think about it much. It looks different to me these days, with different eyes. It’s a hodgepodge of shotcrete and other methods for making artificial walls. All to try to protect against erosion and shoreline loss. It’s an endless task. It works, for a while (see Image 1 above).

These kinds of habits and patterns result in complicated, problematic, and sometimes hazardous spaces. The seawalls at Terramar slowly degrade, fail, and break apart over time. They only last so long. There’s a similar situation in Pleasure Point, California, where I have also done fieldwork (see image 2).

That seawall, which is expected to last about 50 years, will eventually result in a shoreline with almost no beach left at all. The seawall, which was built about 10 years ago, has already started to fail here and there. There are places where fragments and rebar litter the beach. In one case, a local surfer was impaled on rusty rebar as he tried to get back to the shore. During recent storms, lifeguards had to rescue surfers who got trapped and could not get in safely because of large waves and tides.

Image 2: Pleasure Point in 2005 (left) and 2021 (right). The new seawall was finished in 2012. Photo: Ryan B. Anderson.

These are the tensions. The shorelines people know, and the shorelines they expect. The beaches, homes, values, and livelihoods they hope to protect. These kinds of structures—seawalls, riprap, jetties, groins—are attempts to hold such values in place.

And, in the end, there are the shorelines we’re left with in the meantime—eroding, changing, degrading, sometimes dangerous, and in a seemingly constant state of repair and upkeep. Like that seawall at Terramar. All of this, all of these hopes and associated material structures, are pitted against the realities of coastal processes, of saltwater, tides, time. 

*This is a slightly modified excerpt from my presentation at the AAA meetings this past month in Toronto as part of the ‘theorizing sea level rise’ session.