Bullfrog Films
46 minutes
Closed Captioned

Grades 7-12, College, Adult

Directed by Howard E. Green
Produced by CBC's "The Nature of Things"

DVD Purchase $79, Rent $45

US Release Date: 1994
Copyright Date: 1993
DVD ISBN: 1-59458-974-7
VHS ISBN: 1-56029-596-1

Subjects
American Studies
Climate Change/Global Warming
Development
Ecology
Environment
Geography
Habitat
Oceans and Coasts
Science
Technology
Society
Technology
Tides
Urban and Regional

Awards and Festivals
Silver Apple, National Educational Media Network Competition
The Shoreline Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

Coastal erosion and our mostly futile efforts to hold the ocean at bay.

"Delivers a message that should be heeded by engineers and geologists alike." Bernard W. Pipkin, Professor Emeritus, USC

"Erosion," says host David Suzuki, "is the eternal dance between waves, wind and land." It's nature's way of transporting sand from one place to another. Nothing is lost, it just changes places - until humans interfere.

As this program clearly shows, people are not content to let nature have its way. In a futile effort, developers, homeowners, and businesses try various engineering solutions to combat the sea. The sea, however, always wins. Jetties, groynes, seawalls and beach renourishment programs are all attempts to defeat the tides. An eight million dollar project of the US Army Corps of Engineers at Folly Beach, South Carolina, was destroyed in March 1993 when the storm of the century hit with hurricane-force winds. The project had attempted to dredge massive amounts of sand and pump it onto the shrinking beachfront. All this work was to replace a beach whose erosion was caused by jetties built just north of the site by the Corps of Engineers some years before.

As Orrin Pilkey, Professor of Geology at Duke University points out, "There is no erosion problem in nature until someone builds some-thing next to the shoreline to measure it by."



Web Page: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/sds.html

Reviews
"Informative, well-produced, and engaging presentation. Coastal erosion is certainly not one of the more widely covered environmental issues...and this work would provide a good introduction to the topic for general library collections and schools."

*** Video Librarian

"A very good, up-to-date film that holds one's interest throughout...It is vintage Pilk