Discoveries on coastal retrogressive breach failures inspired by failure of an underwater fixed platform

Retrogressive breach failures (RBF) are submarine landslides that result in a nearly vertical sand wall above and below the water surface. Previous studies suggest a four-phase mechanism of RBFs, including triggering, propagation, termination, and recovery phases. There have been both laboratory and field studies on the later three phases, while the triggering mechanism of RBFs remain unknown given the event occurrence is unpredictable both spatially and temporally.

Amity Point on North Stradbroke Island, 37 km Northeast from Brisbane, Australia is a valuable coastal flow slide study site with frequent occurrence of approximately every two weeks (Beinssen et al., 2014) of them at a fixed location. Aiming at revealing the triggering mechanism of flow slides, an eight-meter-tall underwater tripod was manufactured and anchored on the seabed. The tripod location was designed to be fixed at a point with minimum bathymetry change during flow slide events referring to existing studies (Beinssen et al., 2014) with between 1.5 m and 2 m deep helical anchors. The tripod collapsed overnight by the undermining of two of the three helical anchors, including the 2 m deep anchor, by a significant underwater flow slide while there was minimal flow slide evidence on the beach.

The short lifespan of the tripod presents the complexity of RBFs (especially underwater) and the limitations of existing research. Underwater RBF events that do not propagate to the shore (or slightly erode the shore) occur more frequently than previous research reported (Beinssen et al., 2014). While it does not propagate to the shore, the event still erodes a significant amount of sand underwater. It indicates the triggering occurs at 10 m underwater or even deeper.