Ocean City students will learn, bay waters will be cleaner because of upweller
By CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
OCEAN CITY — Ocean City High School students will be taking part in the growing movement to reverse the damage humans have caused to the marine ecosystem.
The city recently received a grant that funded installation of an upweller to raise shellfish in a controlled environment on the grounds of the Bayside Center, where officials cut the ribbon on the project Friday, Oct. 23.
Michael Allegretto, aide to Mayor Jay Gillian, said the city takes pride in its “three B’s” — the beach, the boardwalk and the bay.
“As you can see, the bay is an amazing resource but doesn’t always get as much attention as the other two B’s. That’s why projects like this are so important,” he said. “We need to protect the health of our bay for the enjoyment of generations to come, and working with the schools to provide a learning opportunity for our kids is always a great thing.”
Human influences have caused significant changes in the function and quality of the back bay, affecting the physical, chemical and biological components of the ecosystem, according to information provided at the event.
Wakes in no-wake zones erode shorelines. Runoff from rainstorms carries lawn fertilizer, oil from roadways and other nonpoint pollutants into the bay and ocean. Microplastics and other pollution affect water, food and marine ecosystems.
To combat the harmful effects of humans, a coalition of stakeholders has installed the upweller to grow juvenile shellfish.
Water from the bay will be continuously pumped through the upweller to feed the shellfish naturally occurring microscopic organisms. The health and growth of the shellfish will be monitored until they are big enough to be placed in the bay and along back-bay islands, where they will continue to grow and provide natural benefits.
The partners are the city, the New Jersey Corporate Wetlands Restoration Partnership, ACT Engineers, ReClam the Bay and Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station.
Shellfish provide stabilization to marsh edges and provide habitat and food for fish and wildlife. They improve water quality by removing microscopic plants and animals, bacteria and viruses from the water.
Shellfish also play an important role in the cycling of nutrients; they help remove excess nitrogen that can cause algae blooms and other harmful effects.
Junetta Dix, director of environmental services for ACT Engineers, with an office in the Marmora section of Upper Township, helped secure the grant to pay for the project.
She said installation of the upweller is the result of Ocean City’s Shooting Island Wetlands Restoration Project. Shooting Island is a 150-acre bay island that provides flood protection to the city.
“Our bay islands are speed bumps. They’re the first defense for wave attenuation and reduce our back-bay flooding impact, but only as long as the islands are still here and they’re not lost to erosion and sea level rise,” Dix said.
From 1931 to 2015, she said, it’s estimated through the use of historic aerial mapping that New Jersey’s back bays and marshes have decreased in size by more than 400 acres.
Phase I of the Shooting Island Wetlands Restoration Project was completed in March 2019 and consists of a 2,700-linear-foot rock sill on the west side of the island where it gets hit the hardest, and 1,700 linear feet of a living shore line of invertebrate habitat castles along the southern shoreline.
“The habitat castles that are out there now are slowly and naturally becoming populated with plants and invertebrate species, but we recognized an opportunity here to enhance that natural colonization and to provide additional shoreline stabilization along the eroding shoreline of Shooting Island, and we can do that by growing shellfish,” Dix said. “In addition to shoreline stabilization, shellfish such as oysters, ribbed mussels and other bivalves have the ability to filter great quantities of sea water, improving the quality of our marine waters.”
Varieties of shellfish include ribbed mussels, Eastern oysters and hard clams.
Ribbed mussels live in the intertidal layer of the water column. One ribbed mussel filters 15 gallons of water daily; they filter smaller particles than other bivalves, capturing more bacteria.
When ribbed mussels are out of the water during low tide, they trap water and bacteria inside. Juveniles move with a foot. Adults have byssal thread that they use to attach and stay in one place. The byssal threads attach to marsh grass and help prevent erosion.
Ribbed mussels will be placed along Shooting Island to decrease erosion. A rock sill was previously placed there to restore the island to its 1970 shoreline.
Eastern oysters exist in the subtidal layer. One oyster filters 50 gallons of water per day. Oysters create natural reefs under water that reduce wave energy. Oyster larvae set on hard surfaces such as shells, bulkheads, rocks and other oysters. Adult oysters do not move once they are set.
Hard clams live in the benthic layer of the water column. One hard clam filters 24 gallons of water per day. They are known as little necks, cherrystones or quahogs based on their size. Clams have a foot that they use to dig into the sand or sediment, where they stabilize the ground.
The goal of the project is to restore and protect the back-bay ecosystem through:
— Raising shellfish that will be placed in restoration areas;
— Support of community volunteers and local students in raising shellfish;
— Providing educational opportunities to learn more about shellfish and coastal marine resources and ecosystems.
The benefits of a healthy back bay include cleaner and clearer water, removal of polluting nutrients and sediments and reduced algae blooms. It also creates vital habitats for fish, wildlife and plants, as well as providing food for marine life.
The shellfish also provide protection from flooding, erosion and harmful wave action.
In these ways, the project benefits the community through recreation, economic gains, providing food sources and opportunities for education and research.
Dix said the upweller was purchased with a grant from the New Jersey Corporate Wetlands Restoration Partnership.
“Right now we’re growing clams as we test the system and our procedures,” Dix said. “In the future we hope to use the upweller to grow ribbed mussels and oysters to use for restoration projects, but more importantly for the education of our children, our residents and our visitors to Ocean City.
“We’re hopeful that the school district will use the upweller and that local volunteers and the city environmental commission will assist in its operation, teaching and learning about our marine ecosystem and how we can all get involved in protecting and nurturing the health of our wetlands and our bay waters,” Dix said.
Keith Zammit, a science teacher at Ocean City High School and oyster farmer, said the educational impact of the project for students is “bottomless.”
He said chemistry students can measure Ph levels, temperature and levels of dissolved oxygen, total dissolved solids and nutrients, as well as phosphates.
“One of the most critical things impacting the bay is the nitrate growth. That comes from fish waste but the majority of it comes from runoff from people’s fertilizer that they use,” Zammit said.
Biology students can study turbidity, species sampling, coliform testing, local invasive species monitoring and the anatomy and lifecycles of the various local shellfish, while the AP environmental science students can study all of the above.
“They touch on all of those topics,” Zammit said.
Learning about coastal resiliency techniques, establishing the living shellfish towers and reefs, understanding the role of the bay’s islands in reducing the wave energy, analyzing and recording specimen sample data of local estuarian life and measuring the growth rates of different shellfish species are all possible through this project.
“We are hoping to do a tremendous amount of research,” Zammit said. “One of the most exciting things for me is the kids are going to be able to use the knowledge they learn in the classroom and show it out there on the bay. The opportunities are endless for the school district.”