 Horseshoe crabs are some of our oldest coastal inhabitants. They've been spawning on New Jersey and New York coastal beaches for since the time of the dinosaurs.
This Sunday, June 4, you can learn more about these "living fossils" with the American Littoral Society at two locations. We will be hosting horseshoe crab walks on New Jersey's Sandy Hook and at Sunset Cove Park in Broad Channel, NY. The Jamaica Bay walk is free and begins at 9 a.m. in the Sunset Cover Park parking lot off West 22nd Road, in Broad Channel (MAP). Please register so we know how many to expect. The Sandy Hook Bay walk is $10 for Littoral Society members and $20 for non-members. Participants will meet at 6:30 p.m. - 8 p.m. a the B Lot Parking Area in Gateway National Recreation Area's Sandy Hook Unit. Register on our website.
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 Come get crabby with us!
Join the American Littoral Society for two upcoming evening horseshoe crab walks on Sandy Hook. Our expert naturalists will help you learn about some of our oldest friends, 445 million years that is!!! Watch your step as we walk along the sand and wade within the water as they will be crawling at your feet. Experience the excitement of holding one of these ancient creatures as the sun sets over the bay. Walks are set for Sunday, June 4 and June 18 at 6:30 p.m. Meet at B Lot Parking Area in Gateway National Recreation Area's Sandy Hook Unit. Cost is $10 for Littoral Society members, $20 non-members. The American Littoral Society’s new Ask a Scientist series features our expert staff answering your questions.
For the first installment in the series, we are joined by Quinn Whitesall McHerron, Delaware Bayshore Habitat Restoration Coordinator, to answer your questions about horseshoe crabs. She has been managing the Society’s horseshoe crab tagging program since 2014. Through the years, she has introduced thousands of people to these living fossils and the wonders of Delaware Bay. Quinn and the tagging program have been featured on several programs, including a Japanese variety show “Sekai no Hate Made ItteQ!” and the television series Xploration Awesome Planet, as well as several news articles, publications, and a podcast. Her passion for the coastal environment was evident before she joined the Littoral Society. She received her B.S. in Marine Science at Stockton University and is currently pursuing the Professional Science Master Coastal Zone Management Program at Stockton. This video was filmed at Reeds Beach in Cape May County, NJ. Joining Quinn on the sand is Zach Nickerson, Conservation Coordinator for the Littoral Society. We were inspired at the 2022 Restore America’s Estuaries Conference to start this series, and we wanted to thank San Francisco Estuary Partnership for helping us bring the idea to New Jersey!  As the weather warms up and the flowers start to bloom, the American Littoral Society’s Delaware Bayshore team got busy bringing students out to their school rain gardens for some outdoor exploration!
Recently, our team visited Anthony Rossi Elementary School in Vineland, and Buckshutem Road and Indian Avenue Schools in Bridgeton to bring interactive, STEM-based outdoor experiences to their classrooms. Through these programs, students and teachers were encouraged to try new things, learn new skills, and make connections with nature right outside their door. With magnifying glasses in hand, children got to discover that their rain garden is full of life by peeking under a leaf, digging in the dirt, and listening for buzzing bees! Students became scientists, using the rain garden as a living laboratory for learning and discovery.   The American Littoral Society’s “Shuck It, Don’t Chuck It” Shell Recycling Program is happy to announce the opening of our second community drop-off station outside the Shore Fresh Seafood Market and Restaurant in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ.
The new site is located at 57 Channel Drive in Point Pleasant Beach, next to the inlet for Lake Louise. We are thrilled to be working with Shore Fresh to increase the reach of our shell recycling program, which in turn increases our coastal restoration capacity. To find the drop-off site, go to the waterside of the Shore Fresh parking area closest to the Broadway bridge (towards the right when facing the front of the restaurant). You can also find the location marked with a yellow pin on the Participating Restaurants interactive map on the Shell Recycling page of our website.  During April and early May, the American Littoral Society Education program hosted five beach plantings and clean ups. As part of those events, more than 8,000 native species were planted on beaches in Monmouth County, NJ and 70 pounds of trash were removed. This work involved volunteers from a number of corporations and students from area schools. In addition to helping plant beaches in Perth Amboy and Bradley Beach, corporate volunteers also learned about the importance of living sustainably and avoiding using single use plastic items, as well as what it means to make coastal communities more resilient. Monmouth County students got involved through the Littoral Society’s “Beach Grasses in Classes” program. In addition to hearing about the importance of dunes in their community, their classroom presentations focused on native and invasive grasses, how to stabilize a dune, and general beach ecology. Participating students then came out for a volunteer event in in Asbury Park, NJ on Sunday, April 23 (just after Earth Day) to plant their little culms of American beachgrass and other native grasses on bare spots along the dunes. Many thanks to the New Jersey Plant Materials Center in Cape May and Cicconi Farms in Jackson, NJ for providing plants used for these events.  The American Littoral Society’s work as a South Jersey Water Savers partner organization was recently featured on the POP FM 99.9 radio program Local Interviews with John Salvatore.
In the 4-part interview series, Salvatore discussed the ongoing collaboration between SJ Water Savers and local businesses, farmers, municipalities, and schools. The work aims to address flooding concerns, minimize polluted stormwater runoff, improve wildlife habitat, beautify communities, and create outdoor learning spaces. SJ Water Savers is an educational campaign led by nine environmental organizations, as a part of the Delaware River Watershed Initiative, which is funded by the William Penn Foundation. The campaign’s goal is to protect the Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer – South Jersey’s primary source of water. The American Littoral Society is one of the partners in this initiative. For one part of the interview series, Salvatore spoke with Zach Nickerson, a Conservation Coordinator from the American Littoral Society’s Delaware Bay office, and Amber Egorov, a 4th grade Science and Social Studies teacher from Anthony Rossi Elementary School in Vineland, NJ, about the installation of 2 rain gardens at the school.   Fish Tagging Intern Ashley Pape Congratulations to the Littoral Society's 2023 fish tagging interns, who attended the Atlantic Estuarine Research Society (AERS) spring meeting from March 23-25 at Monmouth University in Long Branch, NJ. The meeting was focused on coastal and estuarine science in the face of a changing climate.
The interns, both seniors at Monmouth County's Marine Academy of Science and Technology (MAST), are James Treshock and Ashley Pape. James won best undergraduate oral presentation for his work on "Assessing the Relationship Between Striped Bass and Morone Saxatilis Yield and Urbanization Along the Hudson River." Ashley is currently studying the effects of climate change on Spiny Dogfish and plans to major in psychology in college next year.  Rowan University students recently spent a day visiting two American Littoral Society restoration sites along the Delaware Bay.
The students were part of a student-driven journalism initiative called South Jersey Climate News, which explores the effects of climate change on a local and regional level in southern New Jersey. They spent a day at Thompsons Marsh and Thompsons Beach, which are located in Cumberland County, NJ, amidst the Heislerville Wildlife Management Area. The group was led by Littoral Society Restoration Program staffers Quinn Whitesall McHerron and Toni Rose Tablante. They were also joined by journalism Professor Mark Berkey-Gerard, an SJ Climate News faculty advisor, and Andrew Lewis, a journalist and author of the book The Drowning of Money Island, which chronicles the struggle of his New Jersey hometown to rebuild in the face of poverty, storm damage and rising seas.. Wells Fargo Volunteers Participated in Two-Day Event to Help Plant Dune Grass and Clean Up Debris in Bradley Beach and Perth Amboy on April 19 and 20  In recognition of Earth Month, coastal conservation nonprofit the American Littoral Society welcomed volunteers on April 19th and 20th from Wells Fargo’s New Jersey offices for a two-day volunteer event to help clean up coastal areas along the Raritan Bayshore and the northern Jersey Shore coastline.
Wells Fargo employees volunteered alongside leaders from the Littoral Society to plant dune grass and clean up debris along Kent Avenue Beach in Bradley Beach and 2nd Street Beach in Perth Amboy. In total, volunteers assisted with the planting of 6,000 dune grass plugs across both beaches. According to the Littoral Society, maintaining a dune system is crucial for protecting beaches and nearby communities during storms. Dune grass helps hold dunes in place by weaving intricate, interconnected root systems, which can extend more than three feet beneath the sand and expand rapidly. It also helps to build dunes by capturing blowing sand, which raises the height of the dune. That, in turn, forces the grass to grow taller, and the cycle begins anew, forming a bulwark against future storms. |
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