The sea. Many of us have a deep longing（渴望） to be by the water. Perhaps more so than ever during the pandemic. With its waves that roll up onto and away from the shore, the sea appears to be both timeless and highly rhythmic. Sand seems to be in endless（无止境的） supply here. But in fact, the world is running out of sand.

  Storms are battering（猛击） shores. Coastlines are crumbling（弄碎） and collapsing. And these processes are being accelerated（加速） by climate change. How can we save what appears so plentiful? This road leads to one of Germany's most beautiful beaches. Vestaland Beach on the North Sea island of Zut.

  Greg Barber was in charge here for almost 45 years. He has a deep love for this landscape, yet he knows just how fragile（易碎的） Zut has become. Greg Barber was born in the U.S. He's traveled far and wide, but Zut convinced him to stay. He wanted to savor this view every day. So, Barber decided to emigrate（永久(使)移居） to Zut.

  To this day, he finds the island's long, sandy beaches captivating. I've been to Hawaii（夏威夷） and California（加利福尼亚）, and the beaches there are also beautiful. But to me, this here is unique. It made a big impression. I was already in love with a woman, and then very soon afterwards fell for this island. Vestaland Beach.

  What looks like untouched（ 未触动过的） nature is actually partly man-made. Each year, from mid-April to October, sand is pumped（用抽机抽） 24/7 onto the west coast of the island. A ship dredges（（用挖泥船等）疏浚） sand from the seabed（海底）, and this is then brought onshore through a 1,200-meter-long pipeline（管道）. Bulldozers（推土机） and diggers transform the sand piles into a beach ready for holidaymakers. It's an entertaining sight for passers-by, but for taxpayers（纳税人）, it's expensive. In this year alone, replacing sand in Zut cost almost 14 million euros.

  The North Sea island's beaches have been nourished with sand since the 1970s. It's a never-ending tug of war between the sea and the islanders. The measure has often come under fire because of its cost, but it also has ecological（ 生态的） consequences, which environmentalists say have been largely ignored up to now. It's a grave（严重的） intervention（干涉） into the sea. Where the sand is removed, an area as big as a football field of seabed 10 meters deep is permanently damaged. The entire time the sand is being dredged up, it's loud.

  It also makes the water cloudy and causes sediment（沉淀物）. If there are hazardous substances deep down, they're brought to the surface again. But the gravest problem is that everything living in this habitat dies. The island's Zut lives off tourism and welcomes more than 700,000 visitors each year. Many are extremely wealthy. Zut has been called the Martha's Vineyard of Germany.

  Houses like these can cost double-digit millions. Without its beaches, Zut would probably be less attractive for tourists. But they secure the island's future in another way besides economics. Without the beach replenishment（补给）, Zut would lose up to 4 meters of shore per year, posing a danger to the island. But is nature far offshore being destroyed to retain these beaches? Sand is not just a cause for heated debate in Zut.

  A short flight away lies the East Frisian Island of Vangaroga. With an area of less than 8 square kilometers, Vangaroga is situated（使位于） in the Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park. The beach here doesn't always look this idyllic（ 田园诗的）. Storms like this one in autumn 2018 are becoming more frequent here. A storm surge（巨涌） can almost completely wash away a sand beach within hours. And extreme weather is becoming more frequent because of climate change.

  It's a problem many communities on Germany's coastline face. Vangaroga also largely lives from tourism, and the island is struggling to cope. On Vangaroga's beaches, Mayor Marcel Fangor can literally watch sand being blown away. Fangor says that without sand being regularly trucked onto this beach, it would no longer exist. The situation poses a significant problem. How much sand would you say you lose each year?

  Along a one-kilometer stretch of beach, we lose between 40 and 80 thousand cubic meters of sand each year. That means a 50-meter wide strip（条带） is torn away. Every year? It depends a bit on the storm tides. This year we were lucky, but in previous years the entire shore protection was laid bare（赤裸的）, and that's not so good for us. How much does it cost to restore the beach and the sand?

  In the past few years, between 250 and 300 thousand euros. Unlike Zoet, Vangaroga has to largely finance its sand replacement（归还） itself. The reason being that retaining the beach here isn't classified as coastal（海滨的） protection, but as a measure designed to preserve tourism. Every year, the sea washes the beach here away. Every year, Vangaroga pays to build it up again. It's a Sisyphian task.

  The mayor would like to try an alternative approach. He wants to use sand-filled tubes to break the strongest waves. We'd like to place a 100-meter long sand tube here that's about 2 meters high and 6 meters wide. The sand tube would serve to reduce the force of the waves. Vangar plans to commission a scientific study to find out whether such a barrier would actually help, as effective measures are desperately needed. Storms here used to be less problematic（ 成问题的）, but these days Vangaroga is becoming ever more vulnerable（易受攻击的）.

  The beach used to be 80 or 90 meters wide, so it wasn't a problem if a winter storm washed a bit away. You could still put out the beach chairs after. Now the situation has changed, and we need to find alternatives. The tube would be one alternative. The question of who should be responsible for beach protection is discussed all along Germany's coastlines, as well as the important question of who should pay for it. Germany's coastal protection and restoration（恢复） already costs millions of euros per year.

  That's why it's imperative（必要的） to find out what the most effective method is. We headed back to the island of Zolt, one of the worst affected in terms of sand loss, to see an era drawing to a close. Here heavy posts made from steel and concrete are being removed. For decades they stood in the sea. These hydraulic（液压的） structures called coastal（海滨的） groins were regarded as the best way of protecting the west coast of the island. Now it turns out that they were useless, says Coastal Protection Officer Wolfgang Siegfried.

  We have always had sand loss from Zolt. We calculated that on average we've lost a million cubic meters a year, and we have records from 1870 to today that show that we've lost an average of one meter of land each year, even though the coastal groins were here. It's always easy to be wise in hindsight（后见之明）, but would you deploy（ 部署） the groins again on Zolt? I would say no.