Croatia, the boom of artificial beaches to keep the postcard promise. “The coast will die”

White sand, crystal clear water, bright sun and idyllic holidays are what the brochures boast, but the promise of a perfect postcard comes at the price of a Faustian pact between tourists and incoming operators, which is slowly destroying the Croatian coast. Some beaches are resisting and are proposing tomorrow's answers to tourist overcrowding.

Of its more than 6,000 kilometers of coastline, including islands, Croatia has only 6 percent of sandy or pebbly beaches. But the millions of visitors who flock to the Adriatic each year expect to be able to spread out their towels on soft, pristine white sand. "Our problem is space," says Dalibor Carevic, a professor of coastal civil engineering at the University of Zagreb . "Where do you want to put all these tourists who just want to lie on the beach?

Primosten, this is how it looks in mid-May

For several years now, some seaside resorts have begun to artificially expand their beaches, "regenerating" them. To extend the surface, they use finely crushed gravel that resembles sand, or small pebbles taken from other sources, such as the seabed or quarries. This happens, for example, in Primosten, between Split and Zadar. A quick image search on the Internet reveals a blond beach and turquoise waters. In mid-May, when the sun's rays are still tempered by the spring wind, visitors are greeted not by a postcard image, but by trucks loaded with rubble that stride across the pine-lined beach.

Tourists began to show up in Primosten in the late 1960s. "And there was no beach back then," Mayor Stipe Petrina told Agence France Presse. "Everything here was rock."

When the first tourists arrived about sixty years ago, rocks were placed to level the coast and allow guests to enter the water more easily. Because of the southerly winds that, week after week, month after month, lash the beach, erosion has gradually accelerated its pace and the shoreline has shrunk. Elected continuously since 2005, the mayor launched a project to expand the beach in 2010. "The idea was to give everyone the opportunity to access this public good that is the sea," he says, between vivid descriptions of the legal disputes with those who tried to stop his projects.

The beginning in 2010 and the disputes

"They described us as the savages of Primosten," he recalls. "It's true, we took (rocks) from the quarry. And everything that was there, everything that bothered us, we leveled. And yes, we were accused of destroying the rocks. That's fine. But today these beaches, where 95 percent of people swim, are there. And whoever wants to can walk a little and go swimming by jumping from the rocks. But I don't see many people doing that."

His town, 2,800 inhabitants and 65 bars and restaurants, welcomes up to 90,000 tourists a year. This year the mayor expects more: Primosten has been described by several British travel agencies as the "hidden pearl" of Croatia, with its "fine sandy beaches and crystal clear waters". It's simple, the mayor sums up: "You can't have 15,000 tourists and a beach that can only accommodate 2,000. We are Primosten. The seaside resort. And we live 100% off tourism". An observation that can be extended to the entire coastline.

The aggravating factor of the poor river supply

Croatia is not the only country to repopulate its beaches: Spain, France, Italy... are also doing it, the civil engineer points out. But the Croatian sea, into which very few rivers flow compared to those facing the other countries mentioned, is precisely for this reason less suited to the contribution of sediments from another environment and its ecosystem reacts more violently. "The more the economic contribution of the coast grows, the more space is taken away from the sea, not only to expand the beaches, but also to build parking lots, ports, roads... We are making our coast artificial. On a large scale", Carevic complains. All of it? No. There is a small beach that has resisted for several years. In Sakarun, on the island of Du gi Otok, every year trucks also passed by to remove the posidonia, a marine plant whose dead leaves settle on the beaches in winter and form large dark "benches" on the beaches, protecting them from erosion.

These “lungs of the seas” also serve as carbon sinks and fish farms. For years, however, they were conscientiously removed. “What tourists are looking for on this beach is sand,” says Kristina Pikelj, a geology professor at the University of Zagreb and a beach protector who has made the protection of seagrass meadows her main goal. In 2021, she launched a research project on the beach, combined with initiatives to raise awareness of its benefits among locals and tourists.

Sakarun and the “Posidonia Operation”

"Posidonia protects what is underneath, it protects the sand. Every time we remove it, we create erosion," explains the professor, because "we remove more sediment than nature can provide." Thanks to his work and the understanding of the residents, the trucks have disappeared for three years. The seagrass meadows are simply moved, stored until the end of the tourist season and repositioned. "There are solutions," insists the researcher who visits the beach every month to assess its condition. "Of course, it takes work, like everything, and money, but the money must be invested."

In 2024, tourism brought Croatia almost 15 billion euros. But despite attracting visitors, these beaches are not eternal. With global warming, "sea levels are rising, waves are getting bigger, and if you built an artificial beach (and probably a row of buildings on the coast), those beaches will be squeezed between the buildings and the rising sea, and they will shrink irremediably" and risk disappearing.

"Those fake beaches are in danger of disappearing soon"

The increase in the number of storms and extreme weather conditions makes artificial beaches more precarious: each storm carries a little more sediment into the sea. But nothing is irreversible yet, Professor Pikelj and her students are convinced, who came to collect samples in Sakarun to imagine future solutions to beach pollution. "Students have a lot of energy, we try to raise awareness and make a difference through our work in the field and in the laboratory," says Marija Meklav, 24, enthusiastically. "Our generation can do it."