Ever-changing coastline – Maugher Beach breach

The sandy dunes of Maugher Beach did not exist in their present form until after the 1940s, when a causeway was built across the mouth of McNabs Pond to the lighthouse, changing the way that materials were moved and deposited by the ocean currents and storms. Prior to the causeway, the pond was accessible by small boats directly from the sea. By 1980 the beach had sealed the pond from the salt water, and the pond had become fresh, greatly changing its ecology.

All that changed in September of 2003 when Hurricane Juan roared into Halifax and directly across McNabs Island. The storm surge crested the rocky beach at the southern end of McNabs Pond, filling it with seawater. Needing a place to go, the water burst through Maugher Beach at the northern end of the pond at a long forgotten culvert buried beneath the beach, creating the breach that exists today. This resulted in the lighthouse being cut off from Lighthouse Road making access for island visitors dangerous and difficult. At the same time it reconnected the pond with the ocean, making the water salty once again.

The story does not end there, however. In the years since the breach, tidal currents have carried sand into the pond, to be deposited as a flood tidal delta, thereby creating more extensive flats than had existed before the storm. It is possible that the breach might ultimately close itself naturally (at least until another big storm reopens it again).

More recently storms in the winter of 2018 and fall of 2019 caused significant damage to Garrison Road, especially evident near Garrison Pier, where the old road and power lines were washed out, and beach gravel was carried overtop, onto the road and into the trees behind. On Maugher Beach, despite its sheltered location in McNabs Cove, storm waves washed gravel along the front and over the top of some of the dunes. Waves notched the front of the dunes where no gravel was present and took out most of the small copse of trees at the outer end of Lighthouse Road before the breach.

It is difficult to predict whether the sandy area will grow or shrink in the coming years, but climate change, rising sea levels and the forces of nature will surely continue to have a major effect on McNabs’ ever-changing shores.