Engineering of an island-style breakwater system for the Fort Pierce marina

Abstract

The push to create shore and harbour protection that is environmentally more compatible often puts the reality of the needs for resilience and strength at odds with the needs of nature. Softer protection schemes, such as floating wave attenuators and non-bottom-founded protection methods, are typically inadequate to resist the ravages of a storm, whereas the construction of solid ring breakwaters changes the texture of the shoreline and affects the biota. Out-of-the-box thinking was required to find an approach that could both emulate the natural environment and yet still be resilient enough to protect against hurricane events, promote ecology and offer safe and manageable navigation. The solution was found in building a protection system of artificial islands configured to create wave sheltering, oriented to reduce long-term sedimentation effects by controlling tidal flow patterns and executed to be a living island archipelago with both benthic and terrestrial habitat.