YRE Article 15–18 years old: 3rd Place

5 min readOct 25, 2020

BIOMIMICRY: THE SALVATION OF THE DUNES (Puerto Rico)

Author: Gabriela Quiñones González, 18 years

Going to the beach is a trip that many people love. From basking in the sun’s rays, to playing in the salty water, creating sandcastles in the edge of the water, visiting the beach is a fun activity that everyone can enjoy. Puerto Rico is known world-wide for these tropical locations, bringing great moments to international tourists who search for a good surfing destination, a relaxing vacation or to explore the island. Many come to visit beaches like Crash Boat, which is in Aguadilla, a municipality in the western part of the island. It is known for its turquoise water and as a good surfing and diving spot. It is an amazing place to see the sunset; something that many visitors enjoy doing. But what if one of the most important aspects of the beach, the sand, were to disappear? How would it change our beach experience? How does that affect the animals that have made the dunes their home?

Dunes, according to National Geography, are “a mound of sand formed by the wind, usually along the beach or in a desert”. They are important for many reasons: they serve as a buffer from the ocean waves and sea wind and they are habitats to animals such as crabs, sea turtles and lizards. The dunes are also home to a number of different plants. But overtime, the dunes have been disappearing, whether it be from construction done on the coast, theft from people, disturbances done by pedestrians or motor vehicles and invasive species of plants or animals. Another major threat that dunes face every year that affects them drastically are hurricanes. In places such as Puerto Rico this poses a major threat for the environment. Since the winds take the sand to other places, thus ruining the ecology around the location.

In a tropical island that faces hurricane warnings every year, a way to minimize the destruction and dangers is more than welcome. With 2017’s hurricane Maria, much of the soil was destroyed , causing many landslides and ruining many homes that made the rebuilding of the disaster even harder. That hurricane caused the destruction of at least 30% of the island’s trees, causing the carbon dioxide to stay in the atmosphere instead of being released. The natural disaster caused many other ecological damages, all that can be prevented if Puerto Rico had better and stronger dunes.

Last year the biologist Dr. Robert J. Mayer, founding director of Vida Marina, the Center for Conservation and Ecological Restoration at the University of Puerto Rico at Aguadilla, created a solution for this problem. He and a group of students from said university took it upon themselves to create ways to slow down this erosion. They have created wooden boardwalks to help the travel between the dunes, re-planted many of the vegetation lost because of the storms and created biomimicry matrices.

Biomimicry, according to the Biomimicry Institute located in Montana, is “an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies”. Dr. Mayer is using biomimicry by constructing a device that captures sand in order to create a bigger amount of sand dunes and to stop the sand from leaving the beach. These biomimicry matrices have been installed in twenty-three places along the northern coast of the island.

In Isabela, a municipality that is also known for its spectacular beaches, the team worked on a beach named Playa Golondrina. There they constructed a boardwalk, promoted the accumulation of sand with biomimicry and replanted many of the lost vegetation in order to help many of the species that live on the coast. The purpose is to create a system with resistance towards coastal storms, in which it will help protect the coast from the storm surge and the strong action of the waves.

But what about now, with the pandemic caused by Covid-19 and the campaign of staying home? According to Dr. Mayer the pandemic has affected his project because for the last two months, he and his team have not been able to visit them and have been remotely analyzing them. As for the dunes, he said, “This unprecedented absence of beach goers has promoted the expansion of the vegetation cover and the accumulation of sand”. So, it means that with less people the dunes have been restoring themselves by growing the lost vegetation. Despite all of the negative outcomes that the outbreak has brought, there has been a silver lining. Nature has been given a moment to take a deep breath and heal.

Once the infection rate slows down and the stay at home order leaves, people will start going to the beaches again. We are left to wonder about the state of the dunes when that happens. Will the surge of people revert the dunes to their destroyed state or at that moment will they be strong enough to protect themselves? Only the future can answer these questions

When that happens we must be prepared. We do not need to be a biologist or an oceanographer to help the dunes. There are many things that we can do in order to help them such as: not driving or walking through areas with vegetation, walking instead through areas with a wooden walkover, returning the sand that was displaced during a storm and preventing any more practices of sand extraction. But also, something that is even more important is to educate people on the importance of the dunes and on how they can protect them. From placing signs on the beach about the dunes, to offering workshops and opening projects to volunteers from all grade levels so they can see firsthand how important they are. With projects like the Center for Conservation and Ecological Restoration at the University of Puerto Rico (Vida Marina), we can go back to enjoying our beaches, we can create a space where we can enjoy the water, appreciate the sun that we take for granted every day and protect the ecosystem.