Beaches on the brink?

The beaches of Seychelles have long been considered the principal attraction for most of the country’s visitors from Europe and elsewhere around the world. It’s no coincidence that the most picturesque beach scenes – from Mahe to Praslin to La Digue and other islands – feature in almost all of the marketing publications, hotel brochures and tour operating guides distributed worldwide to sell Seychelles as a tourism destination.

The seawall at Beau Vallon

But with growing concerns over rising sea levels and other issues, environment officials are worried that the very beaches that define Seychelles for most visitors – as well as for many locals – could be in trouble. To address the problem, the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources initiated a programme last year in which, with help from the private sector, beaches would be monitored more closely. Officials hope to get a better feel for what could be done to alleviate the problems bound to evolve in a changing local landscape facing increased development along coastlines, reclamation and the trash and litter that comes with modernisation.

While the ministry programme continues today with more and more participants entering the fold, Nation takes a look at the current state of some of the most vital beaches in Seychelles for the first in a special series with the help of project officers Alain De Comarmond and Rodney Quatre of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.

In part one of the series, the focus is North Mahe.

Box: Nation’s Beach Tour

Today: North Mahe

June 28: South Mahe

July 5: West Mahe

July 12: Praslin and other islands

Box: Tricks of the Trade: Beach monitoring

Beaches face any number of threats that can reduce their attractiveness or even wipe out the beach altogether. The Ministry of Environment’s beach monitoring programme aims to measure the effects of many factors, such as rising sea levels from global warming, erosion and the nature of the coastal landscape itself.

Officials primarily look at a beach’s “sand budget,” which is the amount of sand that comes and goes from a beach naturally as part of a cycle. The cycle can occur within a year – locally the monsoon seasons carry great effects – or even across much larger intervals years at a time.

But whether it’s 12 months or 12 years, the disruption of that cycle can have disastrous consequences for the beach and could even spark off a chain of events that can alter the ecosystem of an area.

Beau Vallon

Perhaps the most well-known beach in Seychelles, Beau Vallon is an oft-frequented spot by tourists and locals alike. With a number of hotel establishments and restaurants along the beach, it can be considered one of the front-line beaches for tourists visiting Mahe, albeit to a lesser extent nowadays with the relatively recent influx of more five-star clientele.

Beau Vallon can be regarded as stable given the physical nature of the beach. As with any other beach, it does have a natural annual movement of sand, but Mr De Comarmond says that every year roughly the same amount of sand is returned.

“The fact that the beach is located within a bay means that most of the sand more or less remains in the immediate area instead of being carried elsewhere by the currents,” Mr De Comarmond says.

One of the most alarming issues at Beau Vallon is the large amount of litter left behind by the beach users, especially during weekends. Despite efforts by the authorities to line waste bins along the beach, the littering problem remains with the beach commonly frequented by both picnickers and “weekend warriors” with their iceboxes.

The litter is not only unsightly, which can detract from the overall tourism product, but it can also pose a threat to reefs as rubbish can get carried into the sea by the tide.

During the Northwest monsoon from November to around April, sand is removed from the beach by powerful waves and currents, and during this time the beach is completely covered by the swells during high tides.

“A direct result of this has been the degradation and cracking of the existing seawall which protects the public road that runs parallel to the beach,” Mr De Comarmond says.

The ministry intends to leave the sea wall to its own devices, and it will eventually weather and crumble apart naturally. In the meantime the ministry hopes to plant additional coastal vegetation along the beach as a natural line of defence against the sea, but worries remain that beach goers will inexplicably uproot or trample the new plant

Carana Beach

This small but highly popular beach is a hit with both tourists and residents, especially for surfers who enjoy the large waves in the area. A tourism establishment operated at Carana before it closed in the late ‘90s but no other developments have been realised in the area since.

Similarly to Beau Vallon, Carana can be considered stable in terms of sand movement due to the balanced accumulation of sand after erosion during the Southwest monsoon. It also has a sheltered location in between two rock heads, which helps to protect the beach from the direct impact of the currents. Undisturbed plant growth along the beach also helps to keep the beach stable.

“The fact that its dunes are well protected by coastal vegetation also means that erosion by wave action has a lesser effect on Carana Beach,” Mr De Comarmond adds.

Though it enjoys a variety of inherent natural protections, the problem of littering is not an exception at Carana, says Mr Quatre.

“Most often local residents leave their rubbish on the beach or simply get rid of them by disposing everything in the vegetation behind the sand dunes,” Mr Quatre says.

Northeast Point

Situated at the northern-most tip of Mahe, Northeast Point is another popular spot for beach users, especially on Sundays. The beach stretches some 1.5 km along the northeastern coast of Mahe. The presence of beach rocks – masses of sand that have turned into rocks under pressure – indicates that the beach at Northeast Point is quite old.

According to Mr Quatre, though, the visible beach rocks are also indicative of severe erosion along the beach.

“The coast is of high energy during most of the year, generated by the waves and currents, therefore making it very dynamic,” he says. “This means that the movement of sand is even more and the sparsely vegetated dune offers minimal protection to the beach.”

The northern part of the beach has no reef protecting it either, which means bigger swills and stronger currents hits this stretch of beach which, while a bonus for the surfers, also means more erosion.

The rest in the North

There are also a great deal of “pocket beaches” in North Mahe that are quite popular in the Glacis area. These are sheltered beaches where sand deposits between rock heads, but littering is still an issue – even though they are frequented much less –because they lack the regular cleaning crews that sweep more popular beaches like Beau Vallon.

Bel Ombre has a fairly stable beach but accumulates a large amount of marine debris in addition to littering.

Check next week’s Nation for a look at Mahe’s southern beaches like Anse Royale, Anse aux Pins and Intendance.

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