Cover shot from YouTube
The question has been around for years; if Towan in Newquay got the artificial reef treatment, would it turn the heartbreak hotel into a world-class, thumping left hand pointbreak? The theory is all there but the execution is way more nuanced than you might think.
For some, Towan is a shelter when North Atlantic storms start burping up double-digit swells. A close-out, some of the time and can be 50/50 on big low tide sessions. The higher tide offers a few more surprises off the harbour wall and a bit off a wedge off the island. If you’re really keen though, the backwash off a spring high creates a launch pad like no other.
But the feedback is universal and well-known; for the most part, you’re facing a close-out.
Last year, an artificial reef was installed at Middleton Beach in Albany, on the wild southern tip of Western Australia. When the reef opened, for most of the year, and for practically all of every winter, Middleton was little more than a run of unsurfable close-outs. Sound familiar? We aren’t meaning to compare Towan to the power of West Oz. But now, Middleton has become a rippable left hander, and what’s happened there in the year since is worth paying close attention to.
The Southern Ocean Surf Reef opened in July 2025, sitting around 120 metres offshore, built from locally quarried rock rather than anything more exotic. It doesn’t create swell, it refracts it, as all good reefs do.
Before construction, the City of Albany surveyed the public; 728 responses, 90 percent in favour. More so, 97 percent of those respondents lived outside Albany and said they’d visit the town more often if the surf was better. Towan likely doesn’t need more crowds – it’s at capacity. Parking is an issue already and would a reef exacerbate this?
As for the feedback to the Albany reef, Peter Bolt, local surfer and Albany Boardriders spokesperson, said the community feedback had been massively positive.
Towan’s problem has never been a lack of swell. Facing roughly north and tucked behind Newquay’s headland, the predominant west groundswell has to bend a long way around the point before it reaches the beach, losing power along the way. On the right day that bent, softened swell should be perfectly surfable, instead the unshaped sandbank turns it into exactly the kind of low-quality closeout Middleton used to be famous for. A rock reef positioned to catch and refract Towan’s incoming west swell could, in principle, do the same job.
The limitations? It ain’t cheap, plus nuance. Albany’s result took over three decades of advocacy, a purpose-built steering group, roughly $9.75 million in combined government funding, and years of coastal modelling to make sure the reef wouldn’t wreck the beach it was meant to improve. Towan sits inside a working harbour with boat traffic and a lifeboat station, which makes it a harder engineering puzzle than an open beach like Middleton’s.
Food for thought.
