An Abundance of Sea Treasures Washes Up In Sea Bright

By Allison Perrine | aperrine@tworivertimes.com

SEA BRIGHT – Sea treasures of all kinds have washed up on Sea Bright shores following recent ocean dredging work to replenish beach sand in the area.

As a result, beautiful pieces of sea glass, sand dollars, small spiral seashells and colorful rocks have been turning up on Sea Bright beaches. Experts say you never know what else you’ll find.

According to Thomas Herrington, associate director of the Urban Coastal Institute at Monmouth University, many unique – and sometimes historical – artifacts can wash up after dredging work, like pieces of old shipwrecks or cannonballs from the Revolutionary War.

“In some instances, they found cufflinks and buttons,” he said. “There’s a lot of history out there that’s moving around.”

During World War II, as ships came back into the New York Harbor, Herrington said many times people would dump unused ammunition into the waters. In some cases, it later washed ashore. In Long Beach Island, as sand was being replenished, relic armaments were found on the beach.

To prevent that from happening again, materials are now filtered through a large metal box during the pumping process. If any of those relics get caught, they stay in the box and will not wash ashore. In general, the box will trap items larger than a softball, Herrington said. But small treasures like sand dollars and sea glass will fall through and wash up, waiting to be collected by a lucky stroller on the beach.

Sea Bright Councilman Kevin Birdsall said he has not visited the beach in the past few days, but he frequented the shores after Super Storm Sandy. That’s when he found washed up old liquor bottles, broken plates, old white-and-blue porcelain pieces and of course, sea glass. “When you’re pumping stuff off the bottom of the ocean,” he said, “you’ll find some pretty cool stuff.”

And there are many other collectors of sea glass. While Birdsall said he collects his pieces to fill a large bowl on his kitchen table, others use them as personal accessories. Jeanine Riegler of That’s How I Knot, for example, creates and sells sea glass jewelry in the Junction Boutique Gift Shop in Middletown.

She exclusively uses sea glass from Jersey Shore bays and beaches and she usually finds the pieces herself. Then her husband helps her do the drilling in order to put them on the bracelets. “I’ve been collecting my glass since I’m young all along the Jersey Shore,” she said. She started out by selling the bracelets for $2 in a bucket at the beach with her children.

And they’re still popular sellers at the store, said Junction Boutique owner Chris Slater, especially because the pieces are authentic. “The difference with ours is it’s real sea glass,” she said. Sometimes people will sell man-made tumbled glass and will pass it off as natural sea glass. But the pieces sold in the artwork and jewelry at Junction Boutique are hand selected from different beaches. “It’s part of nature. Something was old and probably dumped and look what it became.”

Terri L. Manco, a frequent walker of Monmouth Beach, Long Branch and Sea Bright, said she found 40 sand dollars in one day at the end of December while walking along different beaches. She has even found a piece of rose quartz at the beach near Long Branch.

“It was Dec. 18 and I was walking north of Little Monmouth. I didn’t know they were dredging and I thought, “Oh my God, I hit the mother lode!’ ” she said of the many sand dollars she found. Growing up in Point Pleasant Beach, Manco said she can “spot sea glass from a mile away.”

Middletown resident Kara Emmrich Crespo said she spends most of her time in Sea Bright during the summer months, but this year she decided to pay some visits during the winter. And it sure paid off. “It is very calm and peaceful when you have the beach all to yourself. I have found it even more special since I have been finding sea glass and sand dollars,” she said. “It’s like a gift from the ocean.”

According to Herrington, dredging work is lengthy and requires several permits from the state. Experts must search for sand sources off the coast that closely resemble the grain sizes and colors of the sand on the natural beach. Those areas are deemed “borrow areas.” Once those sources are identified, the permitting process begins.

There are a number of these borrow areas of sand and in Sea Bright they are not far off the beach. According to Birdsall, sand for Sea Bright was pumped from the coast of Sandy Hook.

There’s no telling exactly when Sea Bright beaches will be dredged again. It depends on when Congress appropriates the funding for it as well as the amount of time it takes for the beaches to erode down to a certain width, said Herrington. The widths of the beaches are monitored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Bodies of water are dredged throughout the state. Monmouth Beach and Long Branch are having their sand replenished at the same time as Sea Bright.

To all the sea glass searchers, happy hunting!

The article originally appeared in the Jan. 30 print edition of The Two River Times.