The western section is undeveloped and lower in elevation with smaller dunes. Historically, nourishment activities have not occurred there. Due to its low elevation, future hazards such as sea level rise and storms may increase inundation, overwash, and loss of land on Dauphin Island.
A few years back, Dauphin Island received $7 million from the Deepwater Horizon settlement fund to widen the newly eroding beaches in front of Fort Gaines and the Sea Lab. The locals were especially proud of their new, wider beach, and the town even received an award as one of the nation’s “Best Restored Beaches.” But the patch didn’t last long.
For as long as anyone has kept records, Dauphin Island has been a magnet for violent storms. In the early 1900s, five powerful hurricanes lashed the then mostly empty barrier.
On Dauphin Island, most of the income comes from the 500 or so houses on the two-mile-long west end, nearly all of which are rental properties and vacation homes owned by absentee landlords. Some rent for up to $5,000 a week. Critically, the owners pay a special fee to the town.
The most expensive homes are on the island’s vulnerable west end, where Katrina gutted hundreds of houses, sweeping some off 15-foot-high stilts. “Dauphin is like a bowling alley,” said Hank Caddell, an environmental attorney in Mobile. “It keeps getting hit with all of this heedless destruction.” It isn’t hard to see why.
If water levels on both sides of the island exceed the dune crest, breaching may occur, forming an inlet. Over decadal timescales, barrier islands depend on the accumulation of overwash deposition during individual storm events to migrate landward (rollover) or seaward in response to changes in sea level.
The island has been severely impacted by extreme storm events including Hurricane Ivan (2004), which caused extensive overwash, and Hurricane Katrina (2005), which breached the middle of the island.
Pelican Peninsula is not on any maps because 10 years ago, it was Pelican Island. The little island/sand bar, with its sea oats and tidal flats, has moved around for centuries in this same general location, frequently overtopped by hurricanes and often cut into multiple pieces. But in 2008, Pelican Island moved so far north ...
What is now called Pelican Island, referred to as Isle a l’Espagnol on one old map, functioned as a breakwater for the harbor, as did a smaller sand spit peninsula, which extended from Dauphin Island.
And Pelican Peninsula is not just a great nature walk but also a walk back in history and a chance to look at geology happening right before your very eyes. Pelican Peninsula is a relatively undiscovered beach walk because it is new — so new, in fact, ...
In fact, the walk keeps getting shorter every year. Last year’s Hurricane Michael knocked about a quarter of a mile off the southern end of the peninsula, and it is destined to get shorter and shorter as the sand migrates north onto the beaches of Dauphin Island. Within a few decades, it will just be a very wide beach with sand dunes.
It’s been clearly documented all over the world that humans have accelerated it because we blocked sand movement down the coast through structures, inlets, jetties, etcetera. In the big picture, three things cause erosion at Dauphin Island: sea level rise, storm activity and sand supply.”.
On the map, Dauphin Island appears to be nothing more than a tiny drumstick-shaped strip of land haphazardly located about 30 miles south of Mobile. But take a closer look. Or, better yet, take a step onto the sugary white beaches, and you might notice something far more eye-catching than the crashing saltwater waves or occasional pelican dive-bomb: an incredible labyrinth of natural and manmade sand dunes. These dunes protect inland areas from coastal water intrusion, particularly on the east end of the island, and they’re able to absorb the impact of high-energy storms while also serving as resilient barriers against catastrophic winds and waves.
It would be a difficult task because sand is constantly being removed from the north side of Dauphin Island and placed on the south side in an effort to protect private properties and infrastructure, as well as to keep sand off the roads after major hurricanes.
These dunes protect inland areas from coastal water intrusion, particularly on the east end of the island, and they’re able to absorb the impact of high-energy storms while also serving as resilient barriers against catastrophic winds and waves.
Since the beach is at an angle, the sand rolls downhill. The beauty of it is that the sand rolls downhill until it loses its momentum and stops. The sand piles up, and a lot of it disappears, but it makes a little ridge at the bottom.
The rich irony in Dauphin Island’s situation is that, while beach erosion does pose certain threats to the island’s environmental and geological future, the majority of local realtors and business owners don’t appear to be terribly worried.
But unfortunately, as any longtime resident will tell you, the dunes of Dauphin Island are not indestructible. From hurricanes Frederic in 1979 to Katrina in 2005, storms have left their signature trademarks of structural annihilation and environmental change.
Although this type of habitat is extremely valuable for fish, crabs, and oysters as well as for humans who enjoy the bay, it has been estimated that about six miles of intertidal Mobile Bay shoreline had been completely lost since 1900 because of bulkheads.
In either case, the water in a longshore current flows up onto the beach, and back into the ocean, as it moves in a “sheet” formation. As this sheet of water moves on and off the beach, it can “capture” and transport beach sediment back out to sea. This process, known as “longshore drift,” can cause significant beach erosion.
Sand naturally works its way past most inlets in a process called "sand bypassing" on shoals outside the inlet. As a result, updrift beaches lose sand, and downdrift beaches are sustained. Historically, Alabama had three inlets: Mobile Pass, Little Lagoon Pass, and Perdido Pass.
The second is a process known as beach nourishment, which involves adding large amounts of good-quality sand to beaches to widen them. This process can be used to rebuild beaches damaged in previous decades. The first major beach nourishment project in Alabama was undertaken by the city of Gulf Shores along two and a half miles of the central business district in 2001, at a cost of approximately $6 million. It was so successful that subsequent projects were implemented to enrich another 14 miles of shoreline extending through the city of Orange Beach. These engineered beaches have been successful in two ways. First, they have saved the Gulf Shores beach that was being squeezed out between the Gulf erosion and the seawalls protecting beachfront condominiums. Second, they have reduced the damage to infrastructure, including roads and condominiums, when hurricanes have hit the coast.
The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf had a serious impact on Alabama's coast. Oil washed ashore several times along many of the Gulf beaches and some of the coastal bay shorelines between late June and August 2010. The economic and ecological effects of that spill have yet to be fully determined. Additional Resources.
Because of their constant exposure to breaking waves, wind, and storms, coastal shoreline environments, including Alabama's, are in a constant state of change and are usually being either eroded or built up. Breaking waves move tons of sand along the Alabama coast through a process known as "littoral drift.". ...
Current federal and state regulations allow implementation of living shorelines through a regional, programmatic permit. Alabama's Living Shorelines General Permit (ALG10) provides for the preservation and restoration of dunes, beaches, wetlands, and submerged grassbeds, protection and propagation of essential fish habitat, ...
Millions went to Dauphin Island to repair roads, cart away debris, and help year-round homeowners pay bills while they rebuilt their homes. An island resident sits on the site of her former oceanfront home, which was destroyed by Hurricane Elena in 1985. Bettmann/Getty Images.
Travel guides from the era described Dauphin Island as one of the Gulf’s hidden gems, a quaint, unpretentious oasis of pastel bungalows, white sugar-sand beaches, and spectacular sunsets. They didn’t mention hurricanes or the fact that the 14-mile island was slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.
Dauphin Island has been battered by more than a dozen hurricanes and tropical storms in recent decades. But that hasn’t stopped homeowners on the beach resort from repeatedly getting federal aid and insurance payouts to keep rebuilding in the same vulnerable locations.
Two days after the September storm, Carter flew over the coast to see the damage firsthand and to reassure Alabamans that the federal government had their backs. It was part of a standing tradition among presidents.
Dauphin has received at least $100 million in federal aid, which works out to $170,000 for each of the island’s 1,200 residents. It is unclear how much federal aid Dauphin Island has received over time. The records are incomplete and don’t go back far enough.
But lately it had begun losing sand. Locals blamed the nearby Mobile Ship Channel, which they contend is disrupting the flow of sand along the island, robbing sand from the east end and depositing it in the middle of the island, where huge dunes are migrating landward and threatening to bury several houses on the otherwise sand-starved island. For reasons no one can quite explain, the sand migrating along the island abruptly stops near a town pier here. The beaches below that point, including the heavily developed west end, have lost sand and are vanishing.
Nevertheless, they issued the check, and the new bridge opened in 1982 . That same year, the Reagan administration awarded Dauphin Island a $9 million grant for a sewer plant to serve the west end, where growing numbers of vacation homes were being built.