Story and photos by Joseph Sapia
MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP – Joe Reynolds and helper Mitch Mickley walked a few yards out into the Raritan Bay on Sunday, a 50-foot seine stretched between them.
A few minutes later, they walked the net back to shore, just east of Pews Creek in the Port Monmouth section of Middletown, where their harvest of sea creatures was collected.
“So exciting,” said Melissa Panzino, 39, part of a group waiting ashore as she observed the catch on a windy and warm day. “Nice crab, too,” said Kari Martin, 40, admiring a lady crab.
The Bayshore Watershed Council environmental group holds two public seinings a year, one at the beginning of summer and this one, at the end of summer, in four different locations.
“We try to get people to come out to the bay, enjoy the bay, and learn about the bay,” said Reynolds, the council’s co-chair.
Sunday’s event drew more than 50 people. They gathered at Sandy Hook Bay at Many Mind Creek in Atlantic Highlands; and on Raritan Bay, at Port Monmouth, Conaskonck Point in Union Beach and Cliffwood Beach in Aberdeen.
The seining at Port Monmouth captured various species: shiner, bay anchovy, peanut bunker, hermit crab, juvenile weakfish, bluefish, needle fish and lady crab. After being observed in temporary holding containers and catalogued, the creatures were released back into the bays.
The event gives the curious a chance to encounter the hidden sea world.
“It’s a good opportunity for kids to see what lives in the bay,” said Reynolds, who in his working life is a Monmouth County Park System naturalist. “Hopefully, one of these kids will be a future marine biologist.”
“We prefer to be outdoors, we like to explore,” said Lisa Calzone Laffler, 51, who attended with her son, Garrett, 12, and his friend, Stephen Rispoli, 12, of Middletown.
Volunteers, including Mitch Mickley, far left, a field technician with the New York-New Jersey Baykeeper group, haul in a seine to see what they caught in it at Sandy Hook Bay in Atlantic Highlands.
Panzino, who lives a few blocks away from the Port Monmouth beach, attended with daughters Olivia, 9, and Ava, 7. “I was like, ‘Great!’” said Panzino, who herself grew up on Raritan Bay, in Keansburg. “They’ve been on a boat since they were in car-seat carriers. I thought they would love it and they are. A lot of kids would love this if the parents would just do it.”
Olivia said. “I love ocean animals, they’re so cool. I saw a needle-nose, a snapper, a bunker, the small fish (anchovies).”
Martin said she and her family attended the seining because of a “love for all things that squiggle and wiggle.”
“My kids love all animals,” said Martin, an Oceanport resident. “I think it’s important for them to know about the environment, from the small to the big. It gives them insight into the world they live.”
Martin’s children are daughter Astri, 7, and son, Dery, 5, as in the late D.W. “Dery” Bennett, a legendary local environmentalist who led the Sandy Hook-based American Littoral Society. “Yes, he was named after Dery,” Martin said. “And we hope he can be an old salt just like Dery Bennett was. That’s what we’re teaching him to be.”
Martin’s husband, Joe, 54, grew up in Port Monmouth, swimming, fishing and crabbing in Pews Creek. “A lot of people don’t know anything about the Bayshore,” Joe Martin said.
The seining event on this day had a special significance, because it was Patriot Day, the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America.
“Sept. 11 is a day of charitable service and we are doing our part by helping to educate people about their local environment,” according to the a Bayshore Watershed Council press release.
“As a society, we don’t take care of the earth as we should,” Laffler said. “If we don’t take care of our Earth now, it’s not going to be here for future generations.”
A catch of the day was a large American eel found near the mouth of Many Mind Creek in Atlantic Highlands. Eels breed in the North Atlantic Ocean’s Sargasso Sea, with the young making their way to the coast and inland. Decades later, they return to the Sargasso Sea to spawn.
While inland and on the coast, eels can cross land from water to water. As this one was let go, he slithered on the beach, then swam in the shallows of the bay. Someone offered encouragement: “Keep swimming!”
