When waves strike a hard structure such as boulders or sea walls, they refract and create a backwash that pulls sand away from the shoreline and out to sea, said UC Irvine professor Brett Sanders, who specializes in coastal civil engineering and wave dynamics. While historically sand has kept the ocean away from those hard structures, problematic erosion in the past decade has allowed waves to batter onto rocks put in place to protect the rail line, scouring the sand and eroding the beach even further, Sanders said. Read More