During the fundraiser, American Littoral Society’s Jeff Dement led a kid-friendly seining of the Sandy Hook bayfront.   This event was in honor of long-time NY/NJ Baykeeper Technology Coordinator Dennis Reynolds, who passed away this Saturday.  Reynolds had led these seining events since 1992. 

Identifying over twenty species of fish and shellfish, the group caught everything from important species to this region like the blue claw crab, striped killifish and Atlantic silverside to tropical fish like the tropical snapper who must have been caught in the Gulf Stream and pushed north to Raritan Bay.   One swoop of the net produced a huge biodiversity of fish including mummichog, northern pike, northern kingfish, pin fish, Atlantic needlefish, blackdrum, summer flounder, lizardfish, bluefish and white mullets. 

A curious, young girl picked up a black pouch, and Dement explained that this was a “devils head” – the seed of the invasive Asiatic water chestnut, which grows in Hudson River and must have floated over to Sandy Hook.

The American Littoral Society organizes the largest volunteer salt-water fish tagging program in the U.S, where volunteer fish taggers tag more than 25,000 saltwater fish each year.  If you catch a fish with one of their yellow dorsal loop tags, they urge you to report it to them here. 

Dement explained that Raritan Bay is good for striped bass, blue claws, and – hopefully in the future – oysters.  Just last week, NY/NJ Baykeeper announced that they are once again permitted to continue their oyster restoration research program in New Jersey in the waters of the United States Navel Weapon Station Earle.  This turn-over comes just months after a shut-down from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection who ordered them to stop research and remove all oyster projects in New Jersey waters.