Sinking the five-tonne concrete anchor blocks which will hold the geotextile mat in place. The giant geotextile bags will then be placed on top of the mat and filled with sand from the beach via a 260 metre-long flexible pipe. It will take 4 hours to fill each of the 55 geotextile bags used to make up the reef.

These large mounds of beach material lying infront the Honeycombe Chine development will be used to fill the 55 ‘geotextile bags’ that make up the surf reef. After refinement, the sand will then be pumped using piping from the beach to the reef construction site which is 260 metres offshore.

Photos:

Video: First Day of Construction

Other videos include this short video interview with Dr Shaw Mead, featured on BBC South Today, or the following video on BBC News.

This month, construction begins on the £1.4m artificial surf reef in Bournemouth. It is expected to attract up to 10,000 surfers a year. But how do you go about constructing an artificial surf reef?

Read the full story, with video, on the BBC News website.