-The beaches in Oceanside are super important to the individuals that live here.

It's a part of their culture.

Most people have been in the water, and a lot of them surf on a daily to weekly basis.

They're also raising their kids in that same style to enjoy the ocean.

It's our most beloved piece of Oceanside.

-A lot of people assume that beaches are natural, but, especially in Southern California, we are trying to control the beaches, maintain them, keep them around.

If you've lived here your whole life, you've seen very lush, wide beaches, but in one or two generations, we've seen a dramatic change in the beaches, a dramatic loss.

We haven't been able to keep pace with the rate of erosion.

Climate change, sea level rise are a definite threat to the community of Oceanside.

That's why the city has been investing in trying to adapt the coastline and get it ready for these conditions.

-It's hard to walk here because these rocks are brand new to the area.

Five years ago, we never had rocks like this on the beach.

I have to come from a point of always safety.

Has the ocean remained safe to teach surfing?

Yes.

Now, has changes in the sand, in how far the tide comes up, how far the tide goes out, have those looked different over time?

Absolutely.

-In Southern California, we have this loss of sediment that's getting to our coastline.

That really has a big effect on the natural sand restoration that happens on beaches.

In Santa Ana River watershed, for instance, in Orange County, that's all been flood-controlled.

It's all concrete lines.

That means your river system is not eroding anymore.

It's not gathering sediment and eroding on the banks.

Basically, what's happening is there's not enough sediment traveling through the watercourse out into the literal cell or the currents that flow around in the ocean.

That's not allowing for sandbar development, which diminishes surfing and a lot of other things, but it also diminishes that capability for naturally beaches to restore themselves.

-What would the shoreline look like without a beach?

-If you'd like to see what it looks like, you can go down to South Oceanside.

Without a beach, what we have is a fixed shoreline that is lots of revetment, essentially riprap revetment, which is large boulders that are placed.

The whole purpose is just to protect the home or the infrastructure behind it.

The more and more erosion that we see, the more we see those types of ad hoc protection mechanisms, throwing riprap against a piece of infrastructure to protect it.

That's really not what we're trying to do.

We're trying to be more proactive and thoughtful about it.

-If you even flail off to the side or just jump in, it's all a part of the process.

-[?]

over.

People want sand.

[chuckles] People want the sand.

I think it's the softness, the welcome-mat aspect of it, the fact that it's sand and you're at a beach and you expect sand.

That's huge just to not have access to all of this and to not have part of the world closed off to you that's right in your backyard.

-In Oceanside, we're trying to use many different coastal management tools to restore all the beaches on our 3.75 miles of coastline that we own.

To the north of the pier, where we have sustained beaches, we're trying to utilize the sand that we still have, and we're trying to build up the back beach with sand dunes.

In Southern California, sand dunes are not like the East Coast dunes.

They're about 2 to 3 feet high.

What's interesting about the use of sand dunes in coastal resilience is that they can rise faster than the seas are rising.

It's a really simple, cost-effective, nature-based solution to sea-level rise, to combating climate change.

What Oceanside is doing right now is the coastal sand dune restoration project.

We're doing about 10 different plots, totally 1 acre of coastal dune restoration using simply just sand fencing and some native vegetation that's native to sand dunes.

It's a really low-budget, natural solution to building resilience on the coastline rather than a big engineering project.

-Can we use that little bit that they're bending over the pole?

-These are some seeds of native plants that we are putting here.

We have three species.

The common name for these plants is sand verbena and the beach bar that are the important species for sand growth.

When the vegetation starts to grow, they help accumulate sand, and then they grow together.

-Essentially, nature takes its course after this.

-Exactly.

It's because that's called nature-based solutions.

We are passively helping rebuild the dunes or restart the dunes that are here in 1920, 1930.

-My concern partly is the beauty of it.

I don't think they're very attractive, but also I don't know how effective it's going to be.

My other concern is I think there might be people around that are going to just destroy these fences at night.

Having this place for 30 years and being a taxpayer here, I just don't think it's a good use of money as far as protecting the sand.

-The number one thing I would like to happen with the issue of sand retention and the difference in the tidal waters is everyone coming together to understand that we have different opinions, but we all love the ocean.

We're all on the same team there.

-What Oceanside is now trying to do is this project called Rebeach, which includes sand nourishment, but it also includes the construction of an artificial reef that will dampen that wave energy in that location and allow some of those erosive forces to stay away from the shoreline where we're trying to put the sand back to.

The waves break on the outside reef on the rock, and then they come into the shoreline with a little less wave energy, so a little less energy, a little less of that erosive force.

We expect there to be more sand retention with the placement of this artificial reef.

What that'll do is give Oceansiders at least 30 years of sandy spaces here in areas where it's really desired to have a sandy beach.

-Thanks for watching.

If you liked this story, don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more.

Stick around for the next video.

I think you're going to love it.