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Storms have forced lifeguards to abandon lookout towers on sand dunes at popular west coast beaches.
Yesterday, the Muriwai Surf Life Saving Club called in a giant crane to pluck its patrol tower from a dune that was scoured away during last month's storms.
Part of the tower was hanging over a drop of 10m to the beach.
The six-tonne tower was loaded on to a transporter and taken to a new site.
"The erosion by the encroaching sea is huge, and the way it is going we will have to look at shifting the tower on a regular basis," said club president John Thomas.
The tower had been moved three years ago because of erosion caused by high seas and there had been another retreat before that.
"We've had three big storms since the beginning of May, and they have carved off 5m [of dune] from the front of the tower," said resident and club member Delwyn Shepherd.
"A 6m-high swell on a 4.8m spring tide sent waves crashing over the top of the dune, tearing out trees and washing away plantings of sand-binding grass.
"We lost 13m of dune frontage at the tower. At the new site we have 16m of dune in front and it will be interesting to see how long that lasts."
Storms had also lowered the level of the beach by washing away a vast amount of sand.
At high tide, the water now lapped the face of the high dunes, leaving no room for people to picnic.
The surf clubrooms are further back from the beach, but they will have to be shifted before 2011 at the present rate of erosion.
The patrol tower is a focal point on the beach, which draws a million visitors a year.
At Port Waikato, Sunset Beach Surf Life Saving Club members say their patrol tower is in danger of falling from an eroded dune into the sea.
"It's a tragedy for us, because we have had our tower there for 15 years and three stormy weeks have taken five to eight metres of sandhill from the front," said president Malcolm Beattie.
Engineers are considering cutting the tower from its concrete base and moving it to a new site.
