2021 First came the dredgers, the scientists who dragged giant shovels behind sailing ships and picked through the biological rubble. Vivian Yee New York Times, Star Tribune, 27 Mar. Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 9 June 2023 Several dredgers, including a specialized suction dredger that can extract 2,000 cubic meters of material per hour, were digging around the vessel's bow, which is wedged into the canal's eastern bank. William Booth, Washington Post, 24 July 2023 But recently, Beijing laid claim to 90 percent of the 1.3 million square-mile sea, and has used dredgers to expand dozens of islets and shoals, fortifying them with anti-ship and anti-air missiles, and military-grade airfields. 2023 All this was happening in the narrow confines of navigable waterways busy with commercial traffic, as container ships, sand dredgers, tug boats and ferries made their way through the race. 2023 Dotted along the shoreline are dredgers completing work to add artificial sand, groynes, jetties and breakwaters to prevent further coastal erosion. Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 18 Aug.

Noun China has expanded several islands in the South China Sea, using dredgers and cement machines to not only broaden the size of islets, but build permanent features like seawalls, airfields, and buildings.

Simmer Dredge definition