New Jersey Coastal Resilience Collaborative (NJCRC) partner members gathered on May 12 at the Bayshore Center in Bivalve, New Jersey, for presentations on restoration and resilience projects happening along the Maurice River. The Bayshore Center is home to the state’s official tall ship, the AJ Meerwald, and a historic waterfront museum. The center helps advance the understanding of the human impact on New Jersey’s aquatic environment through education, advocacy, and programming.
The Delaware Estuary Living Shoreline Initiative (DELSI), launched in 2008 by the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary (PDE) and the Rutgers Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory (RU HSRL), introduced one of its first living shoreline projects at Anchor Marina in Matts Landing, Heislerville, in 2010. Designed to stabilize an eroding but vital working waterfront for commercial and recreational fishermen in Cumberland County, the project used coir logs, recycled oyster shell bags, wooden stakes, and native marsh grasses to create shoreline zones at varying elevations. Over the past 16 years, regular monitoring and targeted maintenance efforts in 2014, 2015, and 2018 have helped refine the approach, improved sediment accretion, vegetation growth, and shellfish retention while informing future living shoreline projects throughout the Delaware Estuary.
More recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) – Philadelphia District completed maintenance dredging in the Maurice River federal navigation channel, removing approximately 65,000 cubic yards of sediment to improve navigation safety and beneficially placing the material near the Heislerville Dike to strengthen marsh habitat and protect vulnerable shoreline areas. At the same time, the American Littoral Society (NJALS) has advanced the third phase of its Maurice River restoration initiative by constructing hybrid living breakwaters along Northwest Reach to reduce erosion and shield nearby communities such as Bivalve and Matts Landing from Delaware Bay wave action. Supporting these regional conservation efforts, CU Maurice River connected upstream and downstream by sharing their mission and restoration efforts to protect the Maurice River watershed and the unique environmental, recreational, and cultural resources of Down Jersey for future generations.
Following the presentations, attendees went to Anchor Marina to see PDE and RU HSRL’s project, followed by a gathering along the Heislerville-Matts Landing dike to view USACE and NJDEP Fish and Wildlife (NJFW) and NJALS’s projects.
This field site visit was organized by the NJCRC Field Site Visit Workgroup (Toni Rose Tablante) in collaboration with PDE, HSRL, USACE, NJFW, NJALS, and CU Maurice River. A special thank you to the Bayshore Center at Bivalve and Anchor Marina for hosting us.
For more information on the Field Site Visit Workgroup, or to learn about or propose future activities, contact Mike Galvin MGalvin@jmt.com or Toni Rose Tablante toni.tablante@marine.rutgers.edu.
Interested in becoming a partner of the NJCRC? Click here for partnership information or reach out by email to NJCRC@NJSeaGrant.org.