East Coast Silting?

nortada

nortada

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So what is really happening?

Having followed a number of threads & listened to various experts, is it true to say that there is a general silting up of the East Coast?

If so, what’s causing it, is anybody/thing to blame & what will be the long-term impact on on-water activities?
 
nortada said:
So what is really happening?

Having followed a number of threads & listened to various experts, is it true to say that there is a general silting up of the East Coast?

If so, what’s causing it, is anybody/thing to blame & what will be the long-term impact on on-water activities?
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I blame the bloody windfarms.
All these underwater obstacles have got to have something to do with it.
 
It's been going on for a long time - things like windfarms probably don't help, but we cannot pin the entire blame on them. It's no accident that the eastern end of Kent is called the Isle of Thanet.
 
Brightlingsea has seen a major change in depths in the Northern arm of the creek ever since the sand barges ceased trading from Martins Farm. There seems to have been something of a knock on effect into the South channel as well, but not quite as bad as yotties are still ploughing up and down at all states of tide. The real changes have occurred in the main part of the creek ever since the building of Cell Block 'H' on the old shipyard site. There is a much wider expanse of silt in the river now notably along the Brightlingsea shore.

Still...what is better East Coast mud or South Coast crowds? Give me the mud any day of the week!
 
Long-term geological process, as Maby says.
However I do wonder if things might have speeded up recently, based on what's happening in our creek at Faversham.
Down here in the Swale there is a lot of suspicion about the massive dredging going on by the old Shellhaven, the new London Gateway container port site.
PS give me the mud any day of the week, too.
 
The Lazy Kipper said:
We were thinking of going to Iron Wharf next week, what's the creek like these days?
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My comments were really about Oare Creek, where we berth; regarding Faversham Creek, as far as I know it's much as described in ECP Edn.3, although there has been some dredging at Faversham itself which may have changed some of the profiles a bit. I haven't been up to Iron Wharf since this has been done. The first part of the Creek, as you go round the left-hand bend past the red cans, and past the Wreck post on your right, has visibly shallowed, keep well out to the right as you pass the cans.
 
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Historically speaking

Cobra said:
Brightlingsea has seen a major change in depths in the Northern arm of the creek ever since the sand barges ceased trading from Martins Farm. There seems to have been something of a knock on effect into the South channel as well, but not quite as bad as yotties are still ploughing up and down at all states of tide. The real changes have occurred in the main part of the creek ever since the building of Cell Block 'H' on the old shipyard site. There is a much wider expanse of silt in the river now notably along the Brightlingsea shore.

Still...what is better East Coast mud or South Coast crowds? Give me the mud any day of the week!
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Local folklore has it that Brightlingsea is returning to it's pre war channel depths !
Apparently the MTB's which were based here tore in and out of the channel at 20+knots and eroded the bottom away quite nicely, this pushed the Point clear spit back a couple of hundred yards and widened the entrance. Maybe we should just get the wind farmers to tear about at speed in the harbour for four years to clean it all up again ?:D
 
It's called longshore drift and virtually any man made structure will change the natural pattern that has been in existence since the last ice age. Particularly those designed to preserve on section of coastline, they will invariably do so at the expense of another section.
 
The seabed and coastline has never been stable and never will be, if a channel has remained clear and a cliff has stood un-eroded for 30+ years it's just a short term hiccup in geological terms, it will always do it's own thing eventually wether naturally caused or human caused.
The north norfok coast has a good few well inland villages that were thriving sea ports once, that was long before the windfarms or mtb's.
 
leomagill said:
The seabed and coastline has never been stable and never will be, if a channel has remained clear and a cliff has stood un-eroded for 30+ years it's just a short term hiccup in geological terms, it will always do it's own thing eventually wether naturally caused or human caused.
The north norfok coast has a good few well inland villages that were thriving sea ports once, that was long before the windfarms or mtb's.
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And the odd one now with a surfeit of water:D
 
It seems to me that a lot of the issues around here are to do with the change in trade. No longer do we have shipping traffic visiting Maldon, Colchester and to some extent Brightlingsea. That means that there are two factors; no commercial imperative to dredge, and no large traffic scouring the river...
 
Changes in agriculture - increased mechanisation, bigger fields, more irrrigation, etc. are reckoned to have put a lot more materials in the rivers and creeks in the last 100 years, and over the same period there has been a huge increase in the water abstracted from streams and rivers, which has probably had a big impact on a lot of harbours and rivers.
 
nortada said:
So what is really happening?

Having followed a number of threads & listened to various experts, is it true to say that there is a general silting up of the East Coast?

If so, what’s causing it, is anybody/thing to blame & what will be the long-term impact on on-water activities?
Click to expand...

Dredging in the River Orwell is causing it to silt up. The dredgers clean out the channel but dump back into the river outside the channel.
 
On the Thames they have the opposite problem. Whereas there used to be drying swinging moorings in nice soft mud, the Thames Clippers are removing the mud with their jet propulsion, leaving the drying moorings drying onto harder sand and gravel.
 
If you really want to know...

After a bit of rummaging on t'internet, I found the 'Southern North Sea Sediment Transport Study'. It looks at the processes of coastal erosion and deposition from the Humber to the Medway, and the role of tides and offshore sandbanks in this. Broken down into coastal cells so you can look at the bit that most interests you.

Quite dense in places but fascinating stuff, especially the geological account which traces the changes going back as far as when the Thames, Orwell/Stour, etc, were tributaries of the Rhine, but also considers what might be happening now/soon. Discusses the origins and movement of the some of the sandbanks we East Coasters know and love, and reckons, among other things, that if things continue as at present the Deben spit will gradually move south-east (IIRC) and then disappear!:eek:

Interesting the way that some of the change is cyclical - banks and spits that shift and then shift back again, some of it is slow continuation of processes that have been going on gradually for hundreds or thousand of years, and some changes are relatively sudden and dramatic shifts.


Intro/background:
http://www.eacg.org.uk/index.php/co.../7-frontpage-news/12-sediment-transport-study

Whole set of documents:
http://www.sns2.org/project-outputs.html

Geological account:
http://www.sns2.org/Output files/EX4526-Appendix 10_ver2.pdf
 
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