Saving Seafood

Widening NJ Shore Beaches Is Waste of Money, Fishing and Environmental Groups Say

October 8, 2021 — A coalition of environmental and fishing groups says New Jersey should drop a plan to double the amount of money it spends on beach replenishment, asserting that money could be better spent on more effective ways to protect the state from climate change.

Standing on a beach in Deal, a Monmouth County shore town due to get new sand as part of a $26 million replenishment project next month, the groups on Thursday decried New Jersey’s plan to increase the amount of money it spends on shore protection from $25 million to $50 million a year.

They say that money would be better spent on measures to address repetitive flooding in the northern and central parts of the state along the Raritan and other rivers that often sustain catastrophic damage during storms like Tropical Storm Ida.

Read the full story from NBC New York

 

Thousands of dead fish wash up in N.J. river, bay area over weekend

March 18, 2019 — Thousands of dead fish washed up in creeks that are part of the Shrewsbury River estuary in Monmouth County over the weekend after the large school of menhaden were pursued by predatory fish and depleted the oxygen from the shallow water, state environmental officials said.

The adult menhaden, a species in the herring family, were found near boats in docks in Oceanport Creek, Parker’s Creek and Blackberry Bay in Oceanport early Saturday, the state Department of Environmental Protection said Monday. The fish kill numbered in the “thousands and thousands,” Hajna said.

Read the full story at NJ.com

NEW JERSEY: Seafood co-op seeks more visibility in Monmouth

January 5, 2016 — Patrons of farmers’ markets in Monmouth County and those who support the Grown in Monmouth campaign will be seeing a lot more of the Belford Seafood Co-Op in 2017.

The facility, nestled off Route 36 near the Sandy Hook Bay, has revamped its retail store and will be making efforts to make the organization more visible.

David Tauro is dock manager at Belford Seafood Co-Op, a group of about 20 commercial fishing companies that have been in business together since 1953.

Patrons of the retail store can find just about every kind of Atlantic coast seafood one can imagine, including flounder, cod, tuna, scallops, squid, crabs, lobster and numerous other products.

Scallops furnished by Belford Seafood Co-Op were recently included in a chef’s competition in Asbury Park organized by the Grown in Monmouth marketing initiative.

“We sell pretty much every kind of fish you can think of in the retail store and we also have a wholesale operation at which we sell all the fish caught in our local waters and out as far as 175 miles to the Hudson Canyon,” Tauro said in his office, near several huge walk-in freezer rooms.

The fish typically follow the Gulfstream, he said.

As water near the New Jersey coastline gets colder, whiting, fluke, bluefish, porgies and other fish swim with the warmer waters of the Gulfstream.

“The water can be 70 degrees out there. The canyon water is very deep and warmer and the fish follow it out as it gets colder here. You can be wearing a t-shirt out there in the middle of January,” said Tauro, an experienced commercial fisherman who has made many harvesting trips out to the Hudson Canyon.

He said it can take anywhere from 12 to 15 hours to get there, depending on the commercial vessel you’re on.

Read the full story at AmericanFarm.com

NEW JERSEY: What do you do with 20,000 dead fish? It was all hands on deck in Shore town

August 30, 2016 — Bob Considine, the DEP’s director of communications, said the menhaden population off New Jersey appears to be exceptionally large this year. He said the department had tested samples of the dead fish and “none appear obviously diseased.”

Loesch said that the fish kill was the first in Little Egg Harbor in the 39 years he has lived there. When the scale of it became apparent, the township council authorized the payment of overtime for the public works department.

On Sunday, volunteer firefighters and public works crews working in small boats trained fire hoses on the heaps of dead fish, sending them into the lagoons around Osborn island.

There, MUA employees used a vacuum truck to suck the fish up and transport them to a landfill.

“You can get a lot more volunteer firemen out on a Sunday than you can on a Monday,” Loesch said. “We were lucky.”

Read the full story at Philly.com