THE ISSUE OF COASTAL EROSION AND ACCRETION ALONG MAKRAN COAST OF PAKISTAN Ali Rashid Tabrez, Asif Inam, S. M. Ali, M. Tabrez & M. Danish NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF OCEANOGRAPHY ST 47 CLIFTON BLOCK 1 KARACHI PAKISTAN niopak@gmail.com Pakistan has a coastline about 990km long. The arid coastline of Makran/Balochistan coast stretches from the Iranian border at the mouth of River Dasht eastward 670 km towards the Hub River, while the Sindh coast is about 320km long. The Makran coast is along the tectonically active zone where the Arabian Plate is being subducted under the Eurasian Plate. The Sindh coast is tectonically passive and has one of the major river and delta systems in the world. The Southwest monsoon in this area is known to have one of the highest wave energy. The continuous pounding by these high energy waves, on one hand has created spectacular coastal land forms and on the other hand influenced the massive longshore sand deposition along the Makran Coast. Any man made structural development along the Makran coast has resulted in a swift response both in terms of accretion and erosion. This presentation is based on the case study about a fishing harbor constructed in 1989. After serving the fishermen of the area for around twenty years the harbour has totally been silted up. For the last couple of years, fishermen of the area are facing severe hardships due to ineffectiveness of the harbour due to heavy silting as fishing trawlers that bring large catch are not able to dock at the harbour. This paper would attempt to present a potential solution to tackle the issue of rapid erosion and deposition in this area. INTRODUCTION Strong southwest monsoon winds blow steadily for several months toward this coast, causing extended periods of high water and high waves sweeping in from the southwest. The swell patterns of the southwest monsoon refract around headlands and projected cliff to create sweeping curves of beaches. The dominant beach drifting appears to be toward the east, so that the beach at Pasni, in the lee of Jabal Zarain, develops a zeta form or logarithmic spiral shape (Figure 1). Erosion by wind- driven waves is undoubtedly enhanced by the anthropogenic disturbances introduced in the natural system. The coast of Pasni was in a naturally stable condition as evident by the presence of a crescent shape bay. Technically speaking, this type of a bay is created in an area where the net transport of sediment is almost zero. In other words, the volume of sediments coming in to the bay equals to the volume of sediments going out of the bay. In any such environment, a small disturbance in the naturally stable condition might drastically