Saving Seafood

Enjoy the View While It Lasts. Jersey Shore with 100s of Wind Turbines Revealed

June 20, 2022 — They look like small white crosses along the ocean horizon, about an eighth of an inch in size to ocean gazers along New Jersey’s beaches and shore communities.

But those little marks are actually giant, spinning wind turbines more than 900 feet tall, and they will span full panoramic views in places like Little Egg Harbor near southern Long Beach Island and Stone Harbor just north of Cape May, according to new illustrations released as part of the state’s first planned offshore wind farm.

The images were released for the first time publicly by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on June 17. BOEM published hundreds of pages of analysis, data, graphics and illustrations that reveal much of the details that have not been publicly known about New Jersey’s forthcoming offshore wind farms.

Read the full story at NBC Philadelphia

 

New Jersey fishermen get up close with great white shark

July 9, 2018 — We might be at a summer fishing peak with quite a variety providing something for just about every taste and style.

The incidental catch of a small great white shark at the Cigar has created quite a buzz.

A 4- to 5-foot great white was hooked and released after a short fight that brought it to the boat by Chris O’Neill of Little Egg Harbor Township. As soon as the crew of Joe O’Neill, Chris’ uncle from the Manahawkin section of Stafford Township, Sam Messler, of Manahawkin, and Robert McLauglin, of Barnegat, identified it as a great white, they quickly released it unharmed because it a protected species.

O’Neill, who is 34, said in a phone call Friday afternoon that he and his crew are responsible fishermen who follow all the rules. Sounds as though the crew did everything right during the release. They fish together a lot on his 26-foot Angler boat that he docks in his “backyard,” meaning he lives on the water.

He also said he has caught bigger striped bass. He then made a guess that the fish was months old. And he estimated the phone call from the local scribe was the 30th he has received from various media.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Maturing oyster recovery projects bring calls for money

July 26, 2016 — LITTLE EGG HARBOR, N.J. — Oysters were once so abundant in New Jersey that vacationers would clamber off trains, wade into the water and pluck handfuls to roast for dinner. Their colonies piled so high that boats would sometimes run aground on them, and they were incorporated into navigation maps. Even earlier, Native American tribes would have oyster feasts on the banks of coastal inlets.

But over the centuries, rampant development, pollution, overharvesting and disease drastically reduced the number of oysters, here and around the country; many researchers and volunteer groups estimate oyster populations are down 85 percent from their levels in the 1800s.

That has sparked efforts throughout the coastal United States to establish new oyster colonies, or fortify struggling ones. Though small in scale, the efforts are numerous and growing, and they have a unified goal: showing that oysters can be successfully restored in the wild, paving the way for larger-scale efforts and the larger funding they will require.

While a main goal is increasing the numbers of succulent, salty shellfish bound for dinner plates, oysters also serve other useful purposes. They improve water quality; a single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. They also can protect coastlines; the hard, irregular oyster beds serve as speed bumps that obstruct waves during storms.

“It’s many years and millions of dollars away, but it is attainable,” said Steve Evert, assistant director of the Marine Science and Environmental Field Station at New Jersey’s Stockton University, one of hundreds of organizations working to start or expand oyster colonies.

Most of the projects are small-scale, funded by government grants and volunteer donations. Helen Henderson, of New Jersey’s American Littoral Society, which is growing an oyster reef in Barnegat Bay, hopes successful demonstration projects can lead to an exponential increase in funding for bigger projects.

“Nature has shown us this can be done; we’re just giving it a kick-start,” she said. “Hopefully funding will flow from that once we can show successful outcomes, and we can really make a difference on a much larger scale.”

Read the full story at the Oneida Daily Dispatch