(File Photo by Ryan Morrill)
By Juliet Kaszas-Hoch, The Sandpaper
Long Beach Township has been awarded a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation community resiliency grant in the amount of $87,065.68, to fund the restoration of five bay islands located in the waters west of the municipality. At its September meeting, the township board of commissioners passed a resolution accepting the grant, with Mayor Joseph Mancini signing and executing the grant agreement.
“I think it’s vitally important that we protect the existing sedge island boundaries and areas like Clam Cove,” which is located near the bayside LBT Field Station for Marine Education and Research, in Holgate, said Mancini. “We must use dredge spoils and other materials that are rich in organics to place behind these living shorelines to allow the marsh grasses and other vegetation to grow through.
“By doing this, 1 foot at a time,” the mayor added, “it will maintain the vegetation and achieve the preservation of the shorelines and bay islands.”
Township Sustainability Director Angela Andersen, who applied for the grant funding, joined preliminary assessment efforts at Clam Cove earlier this month, led by project manager Kim McKenna, associate director of the Stockton University Coastal Research Center, and Matthew Deibert, who is pursuing his master’s degree from the university’s Coastal Zone Management graduate program.
“Clam Cove has become an island,” Andersen pointed out. “It’s eroding along the west-northwest side and actually growing on the east-northeast side – with sand shifting all over the place. This leads into the sediment migration we are starting to monitor as we begin looking at how the marsh islands are behaving in the system.”
While on site, McKenna and Deibert “set pressure sensors to determine water levels and duration of flood events on the island marsh edge,” as McKenna explained.
“We are utilizing the Bay Islands Restoration Planner (BIRP) – online at maps.coastalresilience.org/nj-bay-islands – to identify the five islands and to have a record of how most all of the marsh islands from Manasquan Inlet to Little Egg Harbor Inlet have behaved over the last few decades,” said Andersen.
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