The next floating city?
Oh but Oahu’s North Shore is alive with pleasure, these fine winter days, surf pounding for weeks upon weeks, surf gifting the Billabong Pipeline Pro one of its finest starts, but on Oahu’s South Shore a whole host of trouble looms.
Namely, Waikiki, one of the most famous beaches in the entire world, is disappearing thanks to the dastardly sea level rise.
The colorful strand that generates upwards of $7 billion annually is now at the center for much debate, not if climate change is real (apparently all are aligned there) but rather what to do about it.
Hotel developers and their lobbyists claim that “hardening” the beach a la the great Kelly Slater and his tacos is the way to go and favor building large groins in front of the precious real estate.
Surfers, though, like George Downing’s legendary son Keone believes the rules now only favor hotels, tourists and wealthy property owners a la the great Kelly Slater. His solution? To pump more sand onto the beach regularly and keep it up, foregoing groins as they turn waves into “mush burgers.”
Still others believe the answer lies in turning Waikiki into Venice, Italy by hollowing out the lower floors of hotels, restaurants etc. and letting the water come on in. Gondoliers paddling SUPs, crooning Tiny Bubbles.
Oh the last one is my personal favorite as I love Venice very much and could see it all working wonderfully in lovely Waikiki.
The fight is just beginning to heat up with many vested interests ready to fight it out as the ocean continues to creep but are you #TeamGroin, #TeamSand or #TeamVenice?
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Slater is the kook of all kooks for his COVID stance. And flying over the ocean to surf contests does nothing good but stoke feeble egos…
Gotta love a rogue AI.
Nothing bad could possibly come of that huh?
Moana means Ocean in Hawaiian (and most other Polynesian languages, Tahitian, Samoan, NZ Maori etc)
Manoa means Thick, Depth or Solid
So not an unreasonable mistake with or without a Disney loving autocorrect…
I can’t imagine the tourists being drawn to lounging around, sunburning on tropical sea-adjacent concrete, even if named after Mexican food, as delightful as it is.
Sorry. ‘Manoa’.
My old childhood stomping ground.
Erosion through poor coastal (and coastal adjacent) land management is causing problems all over the world.
Rising sea levels, not so much…
Correct.
The Army Corps has rebuilt the jetties here in NY because the original jetties were causing accelerated beach erosion.
In reality…the jetties should have never been built.
The way Kelly took away Barron’s freedom was pretty disrespectful tbh, might pull my eyeballs off the webcast until WSL does the right thing #kancelkelly
Yeah let the water in. The hookers and drug dealers can just float up and down the streets on pool noodles
Like a Thailand floating market!
I LOVE it!
I thought Waikiki was shop worn and tattered in 1978.
Maybe it’s time the sea reclaimed her.
Finally I can see an exit strategy for Laird.
Gondolier. I think he’d be very good, too.
#Teamvenicebeach
Rising sea levels?
I’ve surfed Big Island for 18 years. The beaches look exactly the same now as they did then, and the photos don’t lie.
There it is – all the evidence one needs. SMDH
It’s erosion not rising sea level , similar result but different