sandbar

A raised area of underwater sand that sculpts and directs breaking waves; sandbars are usually dome- or plateau-shaped, and are often formed by littoral or outgoing currents. While some sandbars are more or less fixed—as with Mundaka, Spain, the world's premier rivermouth sandbar—mutability is the classic sandbar trait. Sandbars are often created during a big swell, and erased just as quickly by t...