David Speir thinks so.

“Unfortunately there has been a long term process of infill for Whangapoua Estuary which resulted in a tipping point in 2019 that dramatically changed the form of the wave on the bar, eventually getting rid of it. Now we have essentially no consistent surf break as we knew it.”

The long-time Ōkiwi surfer believes the Barrier’s most famous surf break may still have a future.

“We are only talking about sand and it’s movable stuff,” he told Aotea FM’s Monday morning show.

“To understand its sand motor is important. Whangapoua beach is Holocene sand, offshore sands. They’re the sands that came out of the central North Island when the Waikato River used to empty out through the Thames basin. The sands get pushed on-shore by wave action and then wind action moves that sand around, further up the beach and into the dunes and beyond. The prism of water that moves in and out of the estuary, especially on its ebbing movement, transports the sand back out. When the estuary and its channels were deeper, the water had sufficient velocity to carry the sand, drop it again on the bar where we surfed, and from there it would disperse and move back up the beach.

“So there was this cyclical process that went on, and we’ve been looking back through aerial photography and seeing it operating consistently over the last 60 years.”

“The Bar has never done what it’s done in the last five years. The sand motor has now essentially collapsed. What we’re seeing now is a meandering, fairly low velocity prism of water that’s moving in and out on the tides, and it is not sufficient to pump that sand out of the estuary.”

“It is filling in before our eyes.”

“If we can put the tidal flow channel back to where it was, which was a stable form because it tracked along the southern rocky edge of the beach, we think we can re-establish it. But not just the delta sand bar, we would be re-establishing the health, the mauri of the entire estuary. It has been done in other places.”

“Mangawhai is a really good example of a similar situation. Their whole estuarine system collapsed, Their dune structure was compromised by rabbits eating all the sand-binding pingao. The ocean broached through the barrier bar, sealed off the entrance and created a big, fetid swamp.”

“The locals went, well, we can fix this. They got out there initially with their tractors and small diggers and attempted to do something themselves. Over time, they, with an extraordinary amount of effort, succeeded.”

“They showed that, yes, if you move things back to where it was and you maintain the channels and ensure sufficient depths and subsequent water flow, you can put things back.”

“We’re going to have to have a big community conversation, especially with mana whenua as this is their traditional food gathering grounds which have been severely impacted, to see whether we are up for it – it won’t be cheap – it’ll push the boundaries I imagine.”

David Speir said the next step would be to further assess the feasibility of restoration using advice from experts in coastal geomorphology and estuarine ecology.