Around Dauphin Island, Alabama crews keep building high sand barriers to protect this fragile strip of land from erosion, and nature's wrath keeps washing them away.
Most recently, on Sept. 1, Hurricane Gustav erased a 10-foot-tall berm, a wall of sand that stretched for more than three miles.
Now marine scientists are turning to nature itself as the solution in an experiment to mend eroded shorelines.
By planting tons of oyster shells to form angular breakwaters near Dauphin Island, they hope to show that aquatic life drawn to the shells can create a "living shoreline," preventing coastal erosion better than ugly bulkheads, blunt seawalls or feeble berms that inevitably have to be rebuilt.
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