 After being mulched and planted, the rain gardens at Bridgeton’s Indian Avenue School are now working to improve water quality in the Delaware Bay.
The American Littoral Society was joined recently by several classes of students from Mr. Vena’s 8th grade and 6th grade classes. Over the course of two days, the students worked hard to fill the six gardens with native plants and cover them with mulch. The garden sites were dug out by the Littoral Society Restoration Corps interns over the summer. How do rain gardens off Jackson Run – a Cohansey River tributary – connect to the health of the Delaware Bay? It’s all about stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces and the interconnection of the whole watershed. Green stormwater infrastructure, such as rain gardens, encourages rainwater to flow into the aquifer rather than running off sealed surfaces like parking lots into our rivers and streams, which lead to the bay. It’s healthier for the water to slowly percolate into the soil, which filters out pollutants. Besides keeping pollution out of the bay, the rain gardens also help slowly replenish the local aquifer – which provides drinking water to people living in the area.
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 What did your kids do at school this week?
If you were a 6th or 7th grader at UrbanPromise you would have been knee deep in the Cooper River Lake! As part of our environmental education focus, UrbanPromise has teamed up with American Littoral Society for their SeaQuest program, a 6-week course focusing on the coastlines and the organisms that live there. As part of that, students took part in a fish survey on Cooper River Lake, which involved using a seine net to collect fish and examined them. Students then discussed their observations of the fish and if they thought their environment and living conditions were healthy.  After months of delay due to supply chain issues, the work at Forked River Beach finally got underway in early November with the delivery of materials for building offshore reefs. Called HESCOs, these galvanized wire baskets will be put together by volunteers, then carried by barge to the reef site and filled with stone (to anchor them) and shell (to give oysters a home).
With the help of our new best friend and partner Aaron Ackley, who represents HESCO, the Littoral Society restoration team, along with staff from ReClam the Bay, immediately began learning the most efficient ways to build the HESCO arrays. What we learned was conveyed to more than 20 volunteers who attended training events on November 9. The Lacey Department of Public Works was also on hand as well and provided a trash and recycling can, has helped us with large trash removal, and also gave us 4 sawhorses and lumber which we made into the perfect side panel chicken wire attachment stations. Besides providing insight on how to best streamline assembly of the HESCOs, those initial training sessions also launched our volunteer work days, which will be focused on constructing enough baskets for seven, 200-foot long, double-rowed oyster reef segments.  FFAbove: WeLuvU Foundation volunteers with debris from Jamaica Bay shorelines at Broad Channel. Below: NY State Senator Joe Addabbo addresses volunteers from the WeLuvU Foundation.  Jamaica Bay's Sunset Cove received a thorough cleaning on Sunday, November 21, by an army of smiling volunteers from the WeLuvU Foundation. The group descended on Broad Channel to remove shoreline debris from the cove and adjacent American Ballfield park. Hosted by the American Littoral Society, the group removed 120 bags of plastics and other trash as well as weeds from the newly planted cove area. On hand was NY State Senator Joe Addabbo to welcome the group and thank them for all their hard work. Directing the operation were Alex Kanonik and Don Riepe from the Littoral Society. While one group cleaned the shorelines around American Ballfield, the other group pulled out mugwort and other weedy plants that were obstructing the view of the bay from Sunset Cove.   Great Turnout for Technology Transfer Workshop on Living Shorelines with RAE
On October 19 and 20, the Littoral Society collaborated with Restore America’s Estuaries, the Chesapeake Bay and New Jersey field offices of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the NJ Department of Environmental Protection for Service for the fifth Living Shorelines and Nature-Based Methods Tech Transfer Workshop. Held in Cape May, NJ, at the Grand Hotel, it was a hybrid event with both in person and virtual attendance. More than 380 people attended, including representatives from Korea, Ghana and Europe. This Year's workshop included field trips to local restoration projects, talks by local and national experts, as well as a chance to gather and share knowledge and experiences with peers. This workshop was geared for landowners and professionals, along with anyone working in the marketing, design, construction, or permitting of living shorelines and nature-based shoreline stabilization. Great Turnout for Technology Transfer Workshop on Living Shorelines with RAE
On October 19 and 20, the Littoral Society collaborated with Restore America’s Estuaries, the Chesapeake Bay and New Jersey field offices of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) , the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the NJ Department of Environmental Protection for Service for the fifth Living Shorelines and Nature-Based Methods Tech Transfer Workshop. Held in Cape May, NJ, at the Grand Hotel, it was a hybrid event with both in person and virtual attendance. More than 380 people attended, including representatives from Korea, Ghana and Europe. This Year's workshop included field trips to local restoration projects, talks by local and national experts, as well as a chance to gather and share knowledge and experiences with peers. This workshop was geared for landowners and professionals, along with anyone working in the marketing, design, construction, or permitting of living shorelines and nature-based shoreline stabilization. The Society co-hosted and played a major role. Littoral Society Executive Director Tim Dillingham gave opening remarks, while Capt. Al Modjeski and the Habitat Restoration Program team made presentations at breakout sessions and led a popular field trip to our restoration projects on the Delaware Bay. Our work and partnerships with the USFWS and others was repeatedly recognized and highlighted.  Most people don’t realize it but raptors migrate in good numbers along the Rockaway peninsula this time of year. On Sunday, October 17 more than 120 people attended the Raptorama Festival, an annual event at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, which celebrates the fall transit of birds of prey through the greater New York City area.
Bobby Horvath, a fireman who rescues and rehabilitates raptors and other wildlife, brought 20 disabled raptors to show them ‘up close and personal’ to the delight of children (of all ages) in the crowd. Attending birds included a Bald Eagle, Golden Eagle, Peregrine Falcon, Barn Owl, Kestrel, and Augie, the very tame and beautiful Eurasian Eagle Owl. Volunteer Dennis Guiney and Littoral Society Northeast Chapter Director Don Riepe were on hand to talk to people about each raptor’s biology and behavior.  Thanks to some recent deliveries, the Littoral Society is ready to begin a project along Forked River Beach in Lacey Township, NJ that will help reduce erosion at the site, while also improving water quality in Barnegat Bay.
Thanks to those deliveries, which were delayed by several months due to supply chain issues, the Society has begun scheduling volunteer events. The first two will be held on November 3 and 4 (click here for more information or to register). On October 25, 28,000 pounds of HESCO lids, baskets, and accessories arrived at the staging site near Forked River Beach. Two more deliveries are coming and the material will be used to build seven, 200-foot long, double-rowed oyster reef segments. The reefs will be located offshore and run from the mouth of Forked River in the north, near Bayfront Park, to a lagoon located at the southern end of Beach Boulevard. This section has lost over a hundred feet of shoreline since 1995. Erosion rate is accelerating: abut 20 feet of shoreline were lost in 2017 alone. Children from Bradley Beach Elementary School environmental club came to their hometown beach on Tuesday Oct., 19 for a planting event as part of the American Littoral Society's Beach Grasses in Classes program.
About 20 students from grades five through eight planted 350 beach grass plugs near the entrance to the Brinley Avenue Beach in Bradley Beach. The Beach Grasses program has been running for nearly seven years at the elementary school, but the planting events were halted during the Covid lockdown. Bradley Beach has hosted a number of large and small beach planting events as part of ongoing efforts to restore and protect dunes on the town's beaches.  The last weekend of September was all about oysters at the American Littoral Society. Society staff attended festivals in Asbury Park and Red Bank at which we recycled shucked oyster shells by the bucket full. On Friday and Saturday, Sept. 24 and 25, we were at AsburyFest talking about the Society's Operation Oyster work, including our "Shuck It, Don't Chuck It" oyster shell recycling program, as well as how those shells are being used to help restore bays, estuaries and beaches in New Jersey. On Sunday, Sept. 26, we pitched our tent at the Red Bank Guinness & Oyster Fest for a crazy day of talking about our work in the Two Rivers area, while collecting the shells from about 8,000 oysters consumed by festival attendees. Shells collected from those events pushed our total shell collected this year from participating restaurants to nearly five tons. The recycled shell is trucked to our curing site on Sandy Hook, where they spend about a year in the sun before being used for living shoreline and reef projects around NJ. Click here to learn more about our shell recycling program, Operation Oyster, and reef building projects. |
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