what's happening here is
The dredger in the first picture sits around a mile off shore during low tide, and dredges the sea bed, taking on sand
Then at high tide it comes in to shore (about 100 metres), just to the stern of the ship you can just make out a black line, it is in fact a three foot diameter rubber pipe which floats on the water. The ship hooks up to the pipe of which extends to the shore line where it then converts to a heavy metal pipe of the same diameter. The dredger then takes on water to create a slurry and pumps it's cargo to land, as can be seen from the other pics. The result being that the water drains away and leaves the sand on the beach, were it is then flattened and graded to create a gradient from the sea defences out wards to the foreshore.
WHY
Well the idea being that if you build up the height of the beach by removing the sand from further out then the tides don't come in as far
DOES IT WORK
I hope so my house is only 50 yards away from were the pics were taken
This happens every spring from easter onwards for about six weeks along a stretch of around 16 miles of shore line
and they on average pump around 1 million tons of sand during the operation
the one ironic part is that the dredger has to come all the way from the Arab Emirates each year (we don't appear to have one of our own)
just thought that might be of interest to some
Dave
