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Coastal engineer specializes in wave action, beach changes, and the relationship between the two

By Anne Straub

When most people look at the ocean, they see gently rolling waves, some foam, and maybe an opportunity for a relaxing day at the beach.

Bill Dally sees that and much more. Chances are he’s also making mental calculations on wave height, perhaps timing the period between each crest, and noting wave direction.

Dally, a coastal engineer, operates Surfbreak Engineering Sciences Inc., specializing in wave action, beach changes, and the correlation between the two. The company has offices in Melbourne Beach and Winter Park.

Bill Dally operates a coastal engineering firm, Surf Break Engineering, with offices located in Melbourne Beach and Winter Park.

Those charged with rebuilding New Orleans have tapped his expertise to examine why the levees failed during Hurricane Katrina last year. Surfbreak is performing a risk assessment for rebuilding. Building the levees high enough to keep out all water would be cost prohibitive, so Dally is looking at the cost versus risks of various heights.

Questions he’s examining include whether rebuilding efforts should focus on certain areas, and perhaps reduce the size of the city protected by levees. He’s creating modules to explain what happened during the hurricane and help predict what will happen in the future based on different designs.

Dally is working in the study largely because of a former colleague at Florida Institute of Technology, where Dally taught for 11 years before starting the company in 1998. Former faculty member Don Resio, now a senior scientist for the Army Corps of Engineers, is working on the levee issue and tapped Dally’s expertise.

“There aren’t too many people who are experts in coastal engineering,” Resio said, noting Dally’s experience in waves processes and modeling.

Most Surfbreak clients are government agencies. Dally has served as a consultant to the Sebastian Inlet, for example, for 13 years. He runs Surfbreak with one part-time employee and another full-time coastal engineer, Dan Osiecki, previously a master’s student under Dally at Florida Tech.

In addition to the work in New Orleans, Dally is involved in other hot-button issues, such as the value of beach renourishment. Surfbreak operates a wave gauge on the ocean floor off Spessard Holland Park in Melbourne Beach to collect data. Dally can correlate the wave action to what’s happening to the sand on the beach. Right now, the company is collecting a longer term data base to assess whether beach renourishment programs are worthwhile.

Less controversial and much more fun, Dally has done research into what makes a good surf break. Surf break is a surfing term that refers to waves that make for good surfing.

At Sebastian Inlet, for example, surfers speculated that the surfing was good because waves would bounce off the north jetty. Dally built a physical model of the north jetty and ocean, measuring about 20 by 28 feet, and reconstructed waves. The verdict: The surfers were right. The jetty causes waves to refract and interact with each other as they move toward the beach, creating favorable peaks.

The research is helpful in work Dally is doing for Brevard County, studying the possibility of creating an artificial surf break to enhance the attraction of Space Coast beaches to surfers. The project could have benefits for the county’s tourism industry.

He’s done similar work for Martin County. Creating artificial surf break falls generally into four methods:

	Create an artificial reef.
	Place lumps of sand in the surf zone and let the waves push the sand toward shore.
	Place a large amount of sand in deep water. The waves won’t break over it, but it would disrupt the wave pattern.
	Build a breakwater angled toward shore to reflect the waves.

“If we can create good surf break, we can create a whole new market,” Dally said.

Dally uses the data collected by Surfbreak’s wave gauge in a variety of applications that he hopes helps wean engineers from what he sees as an over-reliance on computer modeling. Studying the actual numbers can show where modeling can get skewed. “They need to strike a balance,” Dally said.

The Melbourne Beach wave gauge data is available on line at http://beach13.beaches.fsu.edu/melbourne/melbourne.asp. Surfers, among others, use the information to judge wave conditions.

Dally became interested in waves and the ocean while growing up in Delaware. His family would vacation on Cape Cod, and he started scuba diving. “I’ve always sort of been a water guy,” said Dally, 50, who also picked up surfing along the way.

He began to pursue coastal and oceanographic engineering, influence in part by the widely televised research of Jacques Cousteau. “Everybody wanted to be a marine biologist,” Dally recalled.

Dally earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Delaware, then did his Ph.D. work at the University of Florida. He moved to Melbourne in 1987 to teach at Florida Tech.

Mutual interest in Japanese martial arts paved the way for him to meet his wife, Mylene, originally from Montreal. The couple has four sons: Alexander, 9; Isaac, 5; and twins Spencer and Gabriel, 3.