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50 Years: The Department of Boating and Waterways, 1957 to 2007
state’s entire coastline. CDIP displays the wave data and modeling
results in color maps and charts on its web site
(http://cdip.ucsd.edu). Internet access to this information helps boaters, the maritime
industry, scientists, coastal residents, design engineers, and many
public agencies, including the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. The CDIP
site averages more than 100,000 hits per day and more than twice that
number during storms.
Cal Boating applies CDIP’s inventory of historical wave information,
combined with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), to
assess future flooding potential along the California coast. New
efforts will help the Ocean Protection Council and California Energy
Commission utilize the published range of projections of sea level rise
by calculating the likelihood of coincidence of future high water levels
with large storm waves. This important work, based on the observed
connection between Pacific Ocean storms and wave height, period and
approach direction established from the CDIP and NDBC historical
record, will help define the magnitude and likely timing of serious
flooding and erosion episodes.
The Online California Coastal Records Project
The Online California Coastal Records Project, one example of the
department’s involvement in beach erosion and restoration efforts,
has been more than 30 years in the making. When erosion threatens
to damage coastal infrastructure, or there is not enough beach width
to meet recreational needs, beach erosion control projects can halt
erosion, preserve and protect the shoreline, minimize economic losses,
and maintain urgently needed recreational beaches. Cal Boating’s
Beach Erosion Control and Public Beach Restoration Programs
address these issues.
In the 1970s, George Armstrong, coastal engineer and then manager
of the Beach Erosion Program, had a vision of an aerial photographic
record of the entire California coastline. No concerted effort had
previously been made to take a statewide picture of California’s
beaches, coastal bluffs and coastal development. Cal Boating wanted
to document shoreline and beach changes over time. George shot a
continuous series of overlapping, oblique aerial photos of the entire
coast in 1972 and 1979, using photographic know-how acquired in
Photo shows a Waverider™ buoy, the
main data gathering system used
by the Coastal Data Information
Program. The pitching, rolling
and heaving movements of the
buoy measure the heights, periods
and travel directions of the ocean
waves passing underneath. Wave
information is transmitted to coastal
stations by cell phone from buoys
near shore, or by satellite link from
offshore or remote locations.
Wave overtopping and subsequent
flooding in Mission Beach, San
Diego exemplify coastal hazards.