Commercial fisherman Michael Burnes is regularly forced to spend multiple nights at sea, away from his family, due to sand buildup blocking access to his Coffs Harbour moorings.
“Now, instead of coming in and unloading our fresh catch every day, we have to stay out for three or four nights because if we come home, we can't get in,” Burnes told the Mid North Coaster on Tuesday.
“When we want to unload at the low tide in the morning, we've had to anchor in the outer harbour for four or five hours.”
The background: Burnes - who mostly targets king prawn - has been operating out of Coffs Harbour’s marina for the past 25 years.
He said the sand buildup has been “particularly bad for the last eight or ten months”.
“Usually, when the harbour gets shallow they bring in a decent sized dredge and then there's no issues for four or five years. That hasn't happened,” he said.
Can’t park here: Burnes owns the two largest commercial vessels in the harbour, one of which is worth around $1 million.
On one occasion, one of his boats became lodged on the sand at a “45-degree angle”.
“When you're talking about a 130 tonne boat, with 60,000 litres of fuel on it … stuck in the sand, it really puts your heart in your throat.”
The practicalities: At this time of the year, Burnes hopes to leave the harbour to begin fishing at around 3pm.
Today (September 29), 3pm coincided with a low tide of 0.2 metres.
To safely get out to sea, Burnes had to choose between leaving at 12pm or 6pm.
The costs: Burnes estimates the reduced harbour access is forcing him to work “an extra seven or eight hours a day”.
“That's hours worth of wages I've got to pay a deckhand. You're also running two households because you’ve got to have food out there for you and your deckhand, and you've got to have food at home for the rest of the family,” he said.
Not cutting it: Emergency dredging did occur at the entrance to the marina in June, but the access issues quickly returned.
Burnes claims sand was only pumped to “about 100 metres away” from the harbour's entrance, and washed back in with the next major swell.
What’s the problem?: According to modelling from Water Technology and Griffith University, Coffs Harbour’s breakwaters and islands - which were connected to the mainland in the 1920s - combine to create a “sand sink”.
Sand can enter the harbour - due to waves and longshore drift - but cannot leave through natural processes.
Commercial challenges: Bob St John, general manager at the Coffs Harbour Fishermen’s Co-op, said a tuna fishing boat had run into trouble on Monday.
“He had 10 tonnes of product on board, and he came in on the high tide thinking it'd be right, and he dragged bottom through the entrance to the inner harbour.”
Solution time: City of Coffs Harbour staff believe around 100,000 cubic metres of sand need to be removed from the harbour.
In January, Transport for NSW (TfNSW) Maritime secured planning approval for a 10-year dredging program. Major dredging is expected to begin in early 2027.
However, it remains unclear where the removed sand will go.
Threatened species: The initial plan was to place it off Park Beach, so it would replenish beaches north of Coffs Harbour which had lost sand due to the harbour and coastal erosion.
However, it was later decided the sand release could harm a threatened type of algae identified at the nearby Muttonbird Island, forcing a rethink.
New plan: In the short term, TfNSW Maritime now wants to dump the sand in deeper waters outside the Solitary Islands Marine Park, to avoid impacts to the algae.
Council is pushing back at this plan, as it means the sand would not replenish local beaches.
Two year wait: The impacts of the original Park Beach option are being investigated, however the assessment is expected to take up to two years.
City of Coffs Harbour GM Murray Wood said the harbour “can’t afford” to wait that long, so council is calling on relevant state ministers to intervene and find a solution which balances protection of the algae with the need for sand replenishment on the beach.
If that fails, the dredging will still go ahead, however the resulting sand will be deposited out to sea and not in a location which will replenish local beaches.