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 Another Memorial Day weekend has come and gone. The summer season has unofficially commenced along the Jersey Shore.
All over Sandy Hook Bay, salt marshes are greening up, Osprey eggs are beginning to hatch inside nest platforms, and Beach Roses are in full bloom on sand dunes and coastal roadsides to create a dense cover of bright white, red or purplish-pink flowers. Nature is in full bloom now. This is a wonderful time to travel around the bay.
(Beach Roses in are now in full bloom all over Sandy Hook)
Yet, I can't dwell on all the wonderful things in nature to see now. When I close my eyes, all I can make out is yucky, slimy brown water.
No doubt this is an upshot of a Saturday spent kayaking in Sandy Hook Bay over the holiday weekend, an event that led me to see normally blue-greenish water swirl into a skank brown.
It all started when I decided to go kayaking on Saturday, May 26. The weather was hazy, hot, and humid, which provided typical summer ambiance. What better way to see the natural sights of early summer in Sandy Hook Bay then to venture out in the water via a kayak.
Laura Bagwell, a friend and an Environmental Commissioner in Red Bank, made up her mind to join me as well. We launched our kayaks around 10:15am across from Parking Lot H, into Horseshoe Cove.
The voyage started out fine. We observed plenty of Least Terns (an endangered species in New Jersey) mating, which is when a male will dive into the water to catch a small fish to feed to the female. We also viewed a number of small shorebirds, such as Black-bellied Plovers and Ruddy Turnstones, stopping to rest and feed along the sandy beaches of Sandy Hook before they continue their journey up to the Arctic to breed. We even saw a few Horseshoe Crabs shuffling on the sandy shoreline and being shoved forward onto the beach by the rhythmic motion of the tides.
(A view of the striking discoloration and foamy nature of water during a brown tide with a piece of white garbage floating on top)
Things started to get worse as we paddled our way farther south and beyond the grasp of the shoreline. All of sudden the water quality became discolored. It took on a murky, brown color, sort of like coffee. The bay was foamy, grimy, slimy, odious, and obnoxious. It was totally gross!
The birds could see this filthy water as well. The terns would not dive in the disgusting brown water to get a fish.
Could we be kayaking in raw sewage? Was this a large amount of polluted runoff? We didn't know, so we decided to report the brown water that was flowing in Sandy Hook Bay to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP).
On my cell phone, I called 1-877-WARNDEP, which is a toll-free telephone hotline number people can use to report environmental incidents, abuses, and complaints to the State of New Jersey. The operator took my name and address, and filled out a report of the incident. The whole process took no more than five minutes and at the end of the phone call the operator provided to me an incident number that I could use to track the results of this event. The tracking number was 070526104302.
Later on in the day, I received a phone call from Virginia Laughton from NJDEP. She explained to me that Laura and I probably encountered a brown tide. High amounts of algae were reported the other day in the Shrewsbury River and parts of Sandy Hook Bay, she stated.
(Brown tides can occur when certain algae species reach high concentrations, or "blooms," that discolor water. They can harm marine life and overall degrade the quality of life for all species along the coast).
It was disgusting brown algal scum that we observed! A massive algae bloom struck Sandy Hook Bay over the Memorial Day weekend to darken the waters.
According to scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute at Cape Cod, although there are no known human health impacts from brown tides, these algal blooms can have a toxic effect on certain bivalves or shellfish species, such as Bay Scallops, Blue Mussels, Oysters, and Hard Clams. A brown tide will severe up a toxic meal to bivalves, reducing their ability to eat, grow, and reproduce.
In addition, brown tides can also block sunlight from reaching the bottom of the bay. A dense, large brown tide will stop sunlight from traveling through the water to reach the bottom of the bay. This drop in sunlight will cause a decrease in underwater plants and sea grasses, which are important habitat or home for juvenile aquatic critters.
Moreover, a massive brown tide can decrease certain types of phytoplankton (tiny microscopic plankton plants) that are a major food source for phytoplankton (tiny microscopic plankton animals) and baby fish larvae. Thus a brown tide can have a significant negative impact up an aquatic food chain in Sandy Hook Bay.
(A young Blue-Claw Crab that could be impacted from a brown tide due to decreased food, habitat and diminishing low-oxygen levels in bay waters)
Economically, brown tides can also be damaging to local businesses. Take for example, Long Island Sound. Before brown tides were common there, the Bay Scallop had a value of around $2 million and represented 27 percent of the entire Bay Scallop sales in the United States. Nowadays, persistent algal blooms have shrunk the yearly scallop harvest to only about a few thousand dollars.
While scientists admit that they still do have a full understanding of what causes brown tides, here are a few things that seem certain at this time. Large-scale brown tides were first observed in 1985 in Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, and in the Peconic and Great South Bays of Long Island. Increased algae growth turned the water deep, murky brown and blocked out light to cause widespread destruction of local aquatic habitat.
Brown tides appear to be increasing in number and intensity now in coastal waters along the northwestern Atlantic Ocean to include Sandy Hook Bay, Raritan Bay, and Barnegat Bay. They seem to strike in shallow bays where there has been a sudden change in water temperature from cold to warm and low rainfall (which reduces flushing and tidal action, and elevates nutrients), and high salinity levels.
A recent New York Sea Grant sponsored study also showed that increased amounts of organic nitrogen might be contributing to blooms. Organic nitrogen enters bay waters from animal, human and plant activities that turn out manure, sewage, compost, and decomposing lawn clippings or leaves.
Although more research and monitoring needs to be done by scientists to find out the cause of brown tides, there is no doubt in my mind that past land-use decisions and poor planning of our aquatic resources has induced the natural balance in local bay and river waters to be shut off. Brown tides are growing and expanding uncontrollably like never before in coastal bays; and are more widely distributed than was previously thought.
It is a very frightening thing! We cannot continue to mismanage our waters and not expect to have a poor quality of life from polluted water to an increase in beach closures to an increase in the closing of shellfish beds and fisheries. Everything is connected in nature. | 
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