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It is the first week of June along the northern Jersey Shore. All around there are sights and scenes of nature in full bloom. In our local woodlands, Locust trees are flourishing a creamy white flower and Mountain Laurels are peaking now with hues of pure white to pink flowers. Down by the bay, Beach Roses are thriving, Annual Glassworts are increasing in size, mats of Beach Heather are in full bloom with small, lemon-yellow petals on windblown sands, and not to be overlooked are Eastern Prickly Pear cactuses, which are just about to come into flower. Everything is growing and alive with a steady abundance.
This abundance can be found in our bay waters too. Aquatic plants, algae and microscopic plants, called phytoplankton are blooming in local waters now. This abundance of aquatic plants, however, may well be having a disastrous effect.
(A father and daughter enjoying the Navesink River over the Memorial Day weekend. Did they know about the alga bloom along the northern Jersey Shore and would the father still let his daughter play in the water had he been aware of the bloom?)
Last week, algae and phytoplankton (especially one type of plankton plant called diatoms) crowded our waters to create a brown water event in the Raritan Bay-Sandy Hook Bay watershed region. Ultimately, this brown, murky water extended into the Atlantic Ocean and all the way down to around the Shark River Inlet, reaching out roughly 600 feet offshore. It was a huge spring alga bloom event, the most excessive and elephantine bloom of algae that I have seen in my 39 years of living along the Jersey Shore.
Although a healthy aquatic ecosystem needs blooms of algae for animals to flourish, two things about this latest alga bloom made me really angry. First and foremost was the lack of concern for public safety by our state officials within New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP). Officials within NJDEP knew about this alga bloom at least the Thursday before the big Memorial Day weekend, yet selected to wait until the Tuesday after the holiday to send out a press release to alert the general public about this water quality event.
This is an outrage! With several municipalities having public beaches along Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook Bay, there is a clear need for safety and information when people go swimming, especially for the very young, very old, and people with weak immune systems. While there is no evidence that the build up of algae in the water will kill humans, there is certainly studies to show that accidentally drinking some algae bloom tainted water can cause vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, or muscle pain. Indeed, I know of several parents that told me of their children throwing up after spending a Saturday or Sunday at the beach and in the water during the Memorial Day weekend. Think of it like eating rotten vegetables - the stuff will not kill you, but can make you sick.
(Many people use our bay beaches. Here is a family refreshing themselves last weekend at Ideal Beach in Port Monmouth. No information was posted anywhere about current water quality conditions)
People should have been given information to make a choice to either go swimming or not. Instead, no option was made available.
I believe strongly that NJDEP is fooling themselves a lot when they don't recognize that the general public has a major influence on coastal polices. Whether the public influence hinders or helps a policy is going to depend on a large degree on the amount of knowledge and information they receive. As more people desire to live in and visit the Jersey Shore, there is an absolute need now to get people educated and more informed about coastal issues that affect their lives.
The second item that makes me angry about the recent alga bloom along the northern Jersey Shore was the way folks at NJDEP nonchalantly addressed the bloom. In my opinion, they acted lackadaisical and laid-back about the whole event. The newspaper articles I looked at and the several people I spoke to at NJDEP stated that the alga bloom was no big deal; it was natural and happens all the time in local waters during the spring. It is just business as usual.
It is true that as spring progresses, the build up of algae is common and important to the good health of an estuary. May and June are typically the months when plant life is really rolling and robust for the many animals of the region to use this rich abundance to feed their developing offspring. The abundance of diatoms, a small plankton plant, can build up in bay waters very fast to turn the water brown. A glass of water can contain millions of individual phytoplankton species, which are an important food and main source of energy for many critters up an aquatic food chain.
(Here is a couple enjoying our bay waters in Leonardo. Again, there was no notice to indicate current water quality conditions)
Yet, our bay waters are slowly being overfed with nutrients or plant food that fuels large alga blooms that in turn, block sunlight to the bottom of the bay to decrease home or habitat for many bottom dwelling critters and it depletes the oxygen in the water as the algae die and decompose. Without sunlight, underwater bay plant life cannot grow and without oxygen, crabs, fish, and shellfish cannot live. There is a disturbing cycle.
Nutrients are a key form of pollution harming our bay waters with immense blooms of algae. In small quantities, nutrients are not harmful. Indeed, Mother Nature has created a system to supply the bay with just the right amount of nitrogen during spring.
As ever-increasing development and population intensifies all around our waterways, however, this action has over-enriched our bay waters. The natural system is broken at best or shut off at worst.
Each year people complain more insistently that the bay is murkier and more turbid that it used to be. Seaweed seems denser and the unsightly scene of large-scale mats of algae foam appears to be more frequent on beaches. Clam beds that used to be harvested recreationally have been closed now for decades with no hope for them to be reopening soon.
(Here is a child swimming in Raritan Bay with no idea about alga blooms or the buildup of nutrients from sewage)
Nutrients enter our waterways through numerous paths. Rainwater carries excess fertilizer on lawns and gardens into storm drains that flow into creeks and ultimately to the bay. Nutrients also come from faulty septic systems, leaky sewage pipes, boats that discharge their waste directly into the bay, or outdated, broken down sewage treatment plants that discharges human waste during heavy rain events into the water. The large-scale blooms of algae are due to our waters becoming over-rich by nutrients from these sources.
The overkill of nutrients in bay waters is not natural and should not be taken nonchalantly by anyone. We need real help to clean up our waters and reduce our nitrogen load.
We need real money to improve long-term water monitoring activities and upgrade sewage treatment facilities within the New York-New Jersey Harbor Estuary. We need more funds to help limit the assault on the environment from poor planning and over-development by purchasing more green open spaces as forested riparian buffers. We need better leadership from the state to control stormwater runoff and reduce the amount of nitrogen flowing into our bay waters. We need more education to instruct people on how to become a responsible steward of their local environment, such as picking up their pet waste, properly throwing away their trash and cigarette butts, ensuring their septic systems are working properly, and using pumpout facilities for their boat.
Instead of less information, we need more information. Instead of state officials working autonomously, we should all be working together to confront the challenges of the bay. Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook Bay cannot be restored overnight, but if the state is truly serious about improving water quality, then we need to have a shared vision at all levels and there needs to be continued dialogue between the public, policy makers, scientists, and educators.
The state talks a lot about coastal stewardship, but now is a good time to ask if they are doing anything to advance the standard of our water quality in Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook Bay. I will promise you this, the transfer of knowledge and information from the state to the general public in a way they can understand is very important in creating a clear plan for restoring and protecting our bay waters. Without this transfer of knowledge, our bay waters will never improve.
Each part of the Jersey Shore is connected. If one part is out of balance, the entire ecosystem will fall apart. | 
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