Eco-kayak tours: Mobile education

I recently ventured around Barnegat Bay on an eco-kayak tour, led by members of Alliance for a Living Ocean – a nonprofit organization based in Ship Bottom that is dedicated to maintaining a healthy coastal ecology through public awareness and action. What I ascertained from the tour is that the best way to learn about the estuary of Long Beach Island is to get involved in it!

Upon arrival at the Ship Bottom Marine Center, which supplied the kayaks and life vests for the event, I met eight other excited tour-goers, of which four had traveled all the way from San Diego to spend their summer on LBI.

“We’ve kayaked all over the world, but we’ve never gone kayaking in New Jersey before,” said Jeffra Becknell, motioning to her wife, Liz Grossman, and her two daughters, Remy, 11, and Jordan, 9. “I grew up in Bergen County, and my mother lives in Manahawkin. So when we came to visit, we figured we’d take the girls kayaking in the bay,” she added.

Photo by Kristin Blair
Ship Bottom Marine Center staff
deliver another kayak for the
Wednesday morning tour group.

ALO’s summer programs coordinator Drew Gamils, who spent many summers as a kid volunteering at the organization with her mother, and ALO Executive Director Chris Huch, who grew up in the area and knew he wanted to be an environmentalist since the first grade, showed up minutes later, excited for the tour and the opportunity to share their wealth of knowledge regarding Barnegat Bay and its surrounding habitat.

“This is my second summer as the programs coordinator,” said Gamils. “Last year was all about learning the information; I had to brush off a few cobwebs. This year it’s all about perfecting the tour. I’ve never had anyone flip over (in their kayak), but then again, this is only my second year,” she joked.

At that moment, I wasn’t too worried about going overboard. I was a bit nervous about soaking my notebook and all of my tour notes with it, but I was mostly concerned about kayaking around the bay for an hour with no access to a bathroom facility. Just thinking about it (and looking at the wide, open body of water I was about to enter) gave me the urge to go.

I quickly scuttled out of the restroom just in time to jump into the last kayak available: a one-seater with no back to lean against. (That’s what happens when you leave the house without going to the bathroom!)

I purposefully left my water bottle on the dock in an attempt to avoid absentmindedly gulping it down and later the necessary need to empty my bladder. But of course, a Ship Bottom Marine Center employee who thought he was being helpful tossed it into my kayak. Laughing, I decided it might come in handy; maybe I’d accidentally stray from the tour, my paddle eaten by a large fish, and I’d find myself lost at sea for days with only this one container of drinkable water.

“Thanks!” I yelled, fervently waving back at him.

As I tried to keep up with the rest of the group, Gamils began explaining how ALO got its footing in 1987, and how the organization has helped put some of the laws and regulations of the Clean Water Act into place. That includes restrictions on ocean dumping, which protects sea life and helps keep waste from washing up on the shore like it did in 1987 – the main reason volunteers came together 25 years ago to form ALO.

Gamils pointed out the Island’s five different ecosystems – the ocean, the shoreline, the dunes, the saltwater marshes and the bay – and the different species that thrive in them.

Photo by Kristin Blair
Tour goers relaxing and enjoying
the view.

Eventually, the strong tidal current got the best of my weak biceps, and I began lagging behind. The last I could hear, Gamils was praising the Island for its nearly pristine beaches and its place as a barrier against mainland erosion – an idea I’d never actually thought about before.

Noticing my slow paddle speed and awkward steering, Huch took it upon himself to keep me updated with relevant tour information. After bonding over the fact we were both graduates of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, I discerned he was taking the role of my personal tour guide. But I knew he was just happy to be sharing his professional interest with me and was making sure I was kept in the loop on the tour.

Huch pointed out a small, dense island full of spartina – a colonizing plant species that grows on the shoreline and extends its root system farther and farther out into the water. Spartina is one of the area’s main wetland grasses. It’s vitally important for absorbing nutrients and preventing floods. Unfortunately, 80 percent of Barnegat Bay’s shoreline is now built up, and the area has lost much of its wetlands. So it’s extremely important to preserve the wetlands that remain.

After awhile, we finally caught up with the rest of the tour group. Crowding around a shallow, submerged island, Gamils and Huch said that we were looking at a cluster of eelgrass and widgeon grass. They explained that the submerged aquatic vegetation provides habitat, nursery ground and food for many different species of wildlife, including fish, crab and scallop.

“They’re incredibly important to the environment here,” explained Huch. “Basically, everything here relies on them; they’re the keystone species of Barnegat Bay. If you took them out of the bay, nothing would be the same. Everything relies on them at some point. If we end up losing them, we end up losing Barnegat Bay as we know it. So it’s very important for us to protect these areas, to study them and to find out why they’re in decline,” he added.

The biggest problem for the bay has been eutrophication – the excess of nutrients from fertilizers that makes its way into the surrounding watershed through water runoff. This pollution creates algae blooms, which wind up suffocating and killing plants and other wildlife.

On our way back toward the marina, Gamils and Huch discussed the problem of CSO, or combined sewage overflow, which occurs when heavy rainfall overloads sewer lines and storm drains at water treatment plants. When this happens, water treatment plants are legally allowed to open their floodgates and let all of the water go at once. So waste winds up washing up onto the shore – something Long Beach Island’s beaches received a heavy dose of this past June.

“We know it’s a problem, but we can’t do anything about it right now,” said Huch. “The only way it will change is if there’s enough public out-cry and the government decides to take control of it.”

Photo by Kristin Blair
Alo's executive director holds
up a piece of widgeon grass
to show to the tour's participants.

Luckily, ALO is continuing strong partnerships with some of the area’s other environmental groups, including ReClam the Bay and Save Barnegat Bay. By working together, they hope to offer many more educational opportunities and create an even bigger public response.

“It’s a very free-flowing curriculum,” said Gamils, in reference to ALO’s Eco-Kayak Tour. “It really depends on what people are interested in and what questions they ask me. If we see an egret, I get very excited because then that opens up the whole thing about hunting. … Some people are very local and just want you to identify things and explain a little bit about the islands, or the beach replenishment project, and things like that. So I like to hit up each person on the tour, especially because as you spread out, it gets harder for everyone to hear.”

“We have a limited amount of time that we can be on the water, and Drew’s an excellent reader of what people want to learn about,” Huch confirmed. “So if people ask a question that shows they’re already interested in something, she’ll veer the kayak tour toward those discussions.”

If you’re interested in getting a hands-on tour of Barnegat Bay, ALO’s Eco-Kayak Tours, voted the best in South Jersey Magazine in 2010, run from 10 to 11 a.m. every Monday and Wednesday in July and August. To register, call 609-494-7800. For more information about the organization’s other summer programs, visit livingocean.org.


This article was published in The Beachcomber.