AL-IDRISI sand-dreger at colwyn bay

hi all,

i have been watching this ship now for 2 years now, it is being used to give colwyn bay a new beach. due to the storms we get, they are doing sea defences all round n wales, but this is a big job as you can see from my photos they have dregged hundrids of tons of sand out in the irish sea and transported the same plus more of rock boulders weighing 2ton plus. why they don't use the sand at Conwy estuary amazes me but ha I no nothing. hope you find this interesting. this is the ship AL-IDRIS they pump the sand by steel pipes which were welded together on my local beach pensarn then rolled into sea with rubber tubes  for floating then towed to colwyn bay as I say it is mamouth job.





sorry its not very clear but you can see the pipe from the ship



will post some more later

david

here is a few more pictuers this one is clearer







that's it for now

david

here are 2 photos of there web site. this shows the water line when loaded with sand.


this one shows here empty

Amazing David we had a Dutch dredge the heads of Port Phillip bay several years ago to allow Super container carriers entry as usual big business wins local marine ecology didn't matter perhaps this is why they dredged ocean sand not local to avoid destroying marine habitat?

There is a RSPB wetlands nature reserve in the estuary which could be damaged if it were dredged, so you are probably right Damien. Or they were concerned that dredging would destabilize the A55 tunnel.

W..

hi damian,
thanks for correcting name.
I meant the bay which covers many square miles, no where near the r.s.p.b I go there my self, our the mussel farm. all boating follows a course which takes ages for boats to enter conwy as its all sand banked , even when tide is in it is still very shallow where the sand is building up, there wont be any access in a few more years if they don't start some sort of dredging. they have had this problem with moystyn port they had a roll on roll off ferry using the port but have given that up because of no dredging only small craft can use this now. soon there will be no access there I think. there are loads in the same position;

david