Point Pleasant Beach Sea-wall...

The town asked if the dive team would check out the area around the wash out of the sea wall at Loughran Point. It took a few days for the water to clear up so we could get pictures and videos and we had to wait for the surge to die down too.

   Last Thursday with the ocean calming down and the surge dropping off and the visibility picking up this was the best time to get in. It was low tide with the tide just starting come back in when I dropped in the water from the center of the wash out. Before dropping in I took some pictures of the area from the surface, noting the broken tie backs for the sheet pilings.

   I swam out a little from the wall and dropped to the bottom. I had no idea where the sheet piling had gone and didn’t want to land on it. I found the bottom and all I saw was sand. I swam east towards the mouth of the inlet and came back to the base of the wall and slowly came back towards the wash out. The bottom here is around 15 feet at low tide and that’s what I had. But as I swam back the bottom started sloping up until I had 6 feet of water at the east end of the wash out...

 

   There is an old wooden bulkhead that the sheet piling laid against and that was still there but no sheet piling and the water depth came up to just 5 feet at the center of the wash out. As I headed towards the west east the water drops back to 6 feet.

   At the west end the sheet piling that is still in place it is being forced out away from the old bulkhead with a gap of about a foot and is full of sand that has washed down into the gap from above. In this picture you can see the slope of sand running downhill from the old bulkhead

    After surveying the base of the wall and the slope of sand I still didn’t find the missing sheet piling or the big piece of concrete that also fell into the water. That took some more searching. 

   It was found around twenty five feet out from the wall and just west of the wash out and folded back on its self, with the concrete still attached.