Answering: What Is This Strange Thing On The Beach?
Answering: What Is This Strange Thing On The Beach?
Answering: What Is This Strange Thing On The Beach?
Living at the Jersey shore you happen to see some strange looking equipment on the beach. This photo, which was taken by Jeff Siebold, shows a very strange engineering vehicle.
For the past few years this machine has been popping up around many South Jersey shore towns. Currently it sits in Avalon.
Before we dive into what the machine is, let’s talk about why it’s on the beach.
A year ago, we announced that Avalon and Stone Harbor started their own beach replenishment project. If you want to read the full article on that or watch the video of how they did it, then click the link below.
Their project, which cost $3.6 million, was to dredge 425,000 to 600,000 cubic yards of sand from Townsends Inlet and rebuild the beaches from 9th street to 22nd street.
Before any project can even dredge up their first grain of sand they need to survey what the beach looks like under the water. This is where our strange vehicle comes in.
The CRAB, or Coastal Research Amphibious Buggy, is a vehicle that measures the underwater portions of the beach. This three legged vehicle sits 35 feet high which allows it to go deep into the water to measure the slope ocean floor.
Before this vehicle was created divers would had to swim down with sticks to measure where the slops are.
Once a project is completed the CRAB will go back and measure the location to make sure they put the sand where it needed to go.
If you to see the CRAB in action check out the videos below.
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