The Am Waj Islands Project involves the development of a new island off the north coast of Muharraq Island in Bahrain (see Figure 1). To protect this new island from wave attack, a scheme of submerged breakwaters has been planned, which should also function as the anchor for a sandy beach, preventing the sand from being washed out into the sea. Two of the technical aspects to be considered in the design process is the amount of wave transmission over the breakwaters (important for the beach stability analysis) and the stability of the armour layer on the breakwater. The present test programme was designed to investigate these aspects for a number of different breakwater configurations.