As the winter surf season gets underway, Sunset Beach residents are calling for help in restoring sand dunes at the world-famous beach that have been scoured away by the forces of the ocean and flocks of visitors.

“It’s just a shame to see it disappear over the years,” said Marilyn Cole, who has lived at Sunset Beach since 1968. “They have done nothing to protect the sand dunes, which used to be higher than the bike path and covered with trees.”

She and her neighbors have three goals in mind.

They want the city to deploy its bulldozer again to push sand from the Paumalu Stream up the beach to an eroded area near the bike path. They would like to put in beach plants such as naupaka to help hold the sand in place. And they hope footpaths will be created to minimize erosion.

“Usually in beach areas that care about erosion, they’ll have diagonal paths through the bushes,” Cole said. “It takes active management.”

In recent years, the city has pushed sand from the stream area to the upper reaches of Sunset Beach every summer. But after last winter’s series of giant swells and wild surf, there wasn’t enough sand near the stream in the summer to be redistributed, according to Nathan Serota, spokesman for the city Department of Parks and Recreation.

Bridge repair work also limited access and traffic flow, making it harder to get heavy equipment to the beach. Then, in September, when the city deployed its bulldozer at Sunset, the equipment malfunctioned partway through the project, Serota said.

“Crews did address the erosion near the path when the sand pushing began,” he said. “Unfortunately, the erosion persisted and the sand pushed to remedy that erosion only lasted a matter of weeks.”

But the city plans to try again.

“We anticipate restarting the sand-pushing at Sunset Beach soon,” Serota said.

Along with the raging waves, the burgeoning number of tourists coming to the North Shore has taken a toll. Hundreds of tourists stream from the road to the shoreline every day, across the width of the beach, often just for a quick photo.

“The erosion is not just from people but from climate change, swells and winds,” said Jeannie Martinson, president of the Sunset Beach Community Association. “It’s amazing how unpredictable it is. But at the parks and the right of ways, erosion has notably gotten worse because of foot traffic.”

Where the sand once was flush with the bike path, there is now a 2-foot drop from the path in one section, which some residents fear could pose a safety hazard to kids on bikes as well as visitors.

“Now that we have the contest season and we’re going to have high surf, it’s only going to get worse,” said Sunset Beach resident Phyllis Shipman. “If they don’t move the sand up, then with the high waves it’ll undercut the bike path and maybe the road as well. We need to take care of it before it gets to be more serious.”

The HIC Pro Sunset Beach surfing contest opened its holding period Thursday, and contest organizers are trying to minimize the impact on the local environment. The World Surf League encourages people to watch its events at home by providing free live broadcasts of its events on Oceanic Time Warner Cable, according to Jodi Wilmott, league general manager for Hawaii.

“Local residents can get the best seat in the house at their own house,” she said, adding that a free app also allows people to watch on their mobile phones. “This greatly reduces traffic and physical attendance.”

This year, organizers shrank the physical footprint of the contest by omitting bleachers and reducing the size of their temporary structure, Wilmott said.

“We are confining our competitors and our key crew that needs to be at the beach to the structure which they can get into directly off the bike path, so that you’re not treading on the berm,” she said.

Wilmott said attendance at Sunset Beach contests is “surprisingly low,” as the surf breaks relatively far offshore, making it a challenging venue for spectators. The daily influx of tourists has more impact, she suggested.

Lifeguards typically record the number of people at the beach three times a day, then add up the total. On the last day of the Vans World Cup, Dec. 3, lifeguards counted 1,390 people at Sunset Beach, while 1,520 were counted at Pipeline and 2,301 at Waimea Bay that day without contests, Wilmott said.

Noncontest days can have bigger counts than contest days. Last year on Nov. 20, a Friday, there were 875 people counted at Sunset Beach compared with 825 people on Dec. 2 during the Vans World Cup.

“On any given day, hundreds of people trudge down the sand and take a few photos and trudge back up the berm and get back on the bus,” Wilmott said. “That’s 365 days a year.

“We run a total of seven days of competition at Sunset for the winter, three for the HIC Pro and four full days for the Vans World Cup.”

The Sunset Beach Community Association, the Outdoor Circle and the Malama Ke Ala Pupukea bike path group are hoping to get together and do some planting in the area soon, the association’s Martinson said. A state coastal geologist recommended it to help prevent erosion, although city employees fear it will just get washed away, she said.

“We have conflicting opinions from the state and the city, but they do meet and they are working together,” Martinson said. “We really believe that light planting can help.”

At the Kahuku end of the beach, where there is vegetation, the sand dunes still reach elevations above the bike path and the highway, and areas that still have trees are not eroded, Cole said.

“There needs to be an action program,” she said. “It basically would be a dune restoration program. It won’t last forever. It would have to be redone when there is high surf that washes things out.”