A major goal of coastal engineering is to develop models for the reliable prediction of short- and long-term near shore evolution. The most successful coastal models are numerical models, which allow flexibility in the choice of initial and boundary conditions. In the present study, evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are employed for multi-objective Pareto optimum design of group method data handling (GMDH)-type neural networks that have been used for bed evolution modeling in the surf zone for reflective beaches, based on the irregular wave experiments performed at the Hydraulic Laboratory of Imperial College (London, UK). The input parameters used for such modeling are significant wave height, wave period, wave action duration, reflection coefficient, distance from shoreline and sand size. In this way, EAs with an encoding scheme are presented for evolutionary design of the generalized GMDH-type neural networks, in which the connectivity configurations in such networks are not limited to adjacent layers. Also, multi-objective EAs with a diversity preserving mechanism are used for Pareto optimization of such GMDH-type neural networks. The most important objectives of GMDH-type neural networks that are considered in this study are training error (TE), prediction error (PE), and number of neurons (N). Different pairs of these objective functions are selected for two-objective optimization processes. Therefore, optimal Pareto fronts of such models are obtained in each case, which exhibit the trade-offs between the corresponding pair of the objectives and, thus, provide different non-dominated optimal choices of GMDH-type neural network model for beach profile evolution. The results showed that the present model has been successfully used to optimally prediction of beach profile evolution on beaches with seawalls.