Coastal management

The Gold Coast is one of Australia's most iconic coastal cities. We have a 52-kilometre coastline, extending from Point Danger at the New South Wales border to Jumpinpin on South Stradbroke Island.

Our coast provides significant economic, social and environmental benefits, making coastal management a serious and important issue for us all.

Our coastline is affected by:

The movement of sand plays a fundamental role in creating and shaping our coastal environment. Driven by waves, longshore drift transports sediment, mainly sand, from New South Wales up the coast to form our beaches and sand islands.

Wave action determines the shape and state of our beaches and coast. The impacts intensify during extreme weather events. The area from shoreline to just beyond the wave breaker zone (sandy littoral zone) is our frontline against powerful wave action.

Cyclones, tsunamis and storm surges affect not just our coastal development and recreational amenity, but also the ecosystems of our coast.

Much of our coastline is highly urbanised. Constructing and modifying infrastructure close to the coastline has exposed our city to significant risk from a dynamic and high energy ocean. There is also the continual risk of pollution from hard rubbish and stormwater that can have significant effects on water quality and wildlife.

Current risks such as sea level rise, storm tide inundation and coastal erosion are compounded by the predicted impacts of climate change.

We manage the coastal zone in line with Commonwealth, State and Local Government laws and policies.

We also have complementary plans and strategies to deliver a coordinated approach to coastal management. These include:

Caring for our coastline involves working with our partners and the community. We collaborate with external agencies including:

The 2021-22 Beach Health Report assesses the health of Gold Coast ocean beaches annually. The report provides the City with valuable information on:

The City has a comprehensive data collection regime to monitor our coastline. We regularly collect data using:

For the Beach Health Report, we split our coastline into 23 beach compartments. We divided the compartments into 3 categories according to:

For each beach compartment, we assess 4 measures of beach health:

We then weight the scores from these measures equally against the 3 categories. This provides an overall health score for each beach compartment.

In 2021-22, 19 of 23 beaches along the Gold Coast were ‘On Track’. This is a positive result for the City. It demonstrates the improvement of the health of our beaches since the adoption of the Ocean Beaches Strategy in 2013.

The La Niña climate brought with it heavy rainfall and flooding events. It caused beaches next to our creeks and rivers to experience periods of reduced water quality. These impacts were temporary and did not reflect the beach conditions throughout the majority of the year.

The City completed significant works to address beach erosion impacts along northern Gold Coast beaches in 2021-22. This included:

Despite severe weather impacts in 2021-22, City coastal management projects continue to work towards:

Download the Beach Health Report map(PDF, 2MB)

Learn more about how we care for our coastline.