Somerset County Parks: June 9, 10, 11

On Friday a group from Somerset County Parks paddled the 1.5 miles out to the Sedge Island Natural Resource Education Center in the sedge Islands of the Barnegat Bay. With the guidance of Jim Merritt Program Director, the group paddled through the mosquito ditches and got a closer look at the Peregrine Falcon pair and their 2 new chicks. Jim picked up Sedge Staff member Katina and intern Alyssa from the dock and was lured back to sedge by the wonderful smells of dinner being prepared.

On Saturday with a steady wind blowing out of the west at 20 mph, the group decided to stay on land and circumnavigate the island picking up trash, collecting seaweed for presses and counting dead burrfish. We found about 7 dead striped burrfish, and came up with many hypothesizes of why they may have washed up but could not find any information to support our educated guesses.

Despite being landlocked we managed to catch many green crabs (an invasive species from Japan), conduct water quality testing, make several seaweed presses and identify 7 different species of seaweed, look at many different invertebrates and seaweed under binocular scopes and magiscope microscopes and finally go clamming for chowder clams for dinner.

Sunday the group got up early and although still windy (only 10-15mph) devised a plan to paddle and with the help of Tony the caretaker be able to go directly back to the dock instead of into the wind back to the Sedge House. We paddled down to the Army Corps of Engineers Dyke and beached the boats to search for horse shoe crab eggs hopefully laid the night before on the high tide. Wile walking across the massive geotubes we got to see firsthand the destruction that Mother Nature can inflict upon man made structures. The geotube had been punctured in 2 places causing major breaches in the engineered system. The water still has to break through another layer and massive sand buildup though before breaking clear through to the other side.

On the beach we found many dead female horse shoe crabs picked clean by the seagulls, however to our disappointment we were unable to see any horse shoe crab eggs or even evidence that many birds had been feeding there. On our paddle back we stopped several times to look at the many different osprey in the area and to look at the sedge grasses and organisms within.

As in previous years the group from Somerset County Parks was fabulous and we had a great time with you on Sedge! We look forward to hearing your comments and seeing you in the future!

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