I saw this letter sent out from Mayor Tim Somers to the residents of Monmouth Beach, New Jersey. (I have to specify that now as the readership is extending down to South Carolina). He was happy to announce that the latest round of beach replenishment is slated to begin in the late fall 2026, right when the striped bass fall run gets into full swing. Just when you thought things were looking good beachside, they're about to get destroyed yet again. And forget about the fishing, what about the ecosystem and the place that so many living things call home?
Frank Pallone surely has maintained his life-long tenure, well since 1988, as a U.S. Congressman representing the 6th District which is Monmouth County and the top of the Jersey Shore, from the votes of people who have beach front properties. While Sandy did a number on the benches, groins, and jetties, in my opinion, Pallone has allowed far more damage to occur in his district. And this latest round of replenishment will kill parts of Sea Bright, Monmouth Beach, and Long Branch, which have been solid fishy spots the last couple of years, as the "sand", and damage, from previous "nourishments" return to the sea.
I first covered the beach replenishment along Monmouth Beach in 2013. Below you can see how it held up just a few months after it was completed. "Donor" sand from the oceans bottom isn't like beach sand. It has a different composition, needs to be filtered through, and lacks compactability. So it only takes a storm or two or solid moon tides to pull the sand back into the water, create sand bars just off the beach, and then eventually return it all to the sea. Well, really it doesn't go straight out, the littoral current coupled with prevailing winds carries it to the north in the summer, and to the south in the winter. That's why your once favorite groin gets shoaled up on either side depending on the time of year. In addition, that's why the False Hook and Sandy Hook Channel needs to be dredged every couple of years.
Above is "Little Monmouth" after the 2013 failed replenishment. And below are a few pics of what it looked like before. The north side of Little Monmouth used to be a great place to fish when the bait used to get trapped in the pocket. And years before that you used to be able to fish off the rocks in front of the condos leading up to Big Monmouth.
And then there was Big Monmouth and the groin that kind of went to the southeast from the rock wall that protected Ocean Avenue from the ocean. There used to be a small beach that went from there up to the old Coast Guard Station. When the tide was low you could walk the old stairs down onto the sand and on big tides and whether you could fish off the rock wall. One of the first times I met Charlie Shapiro was when he was fishing the pocket at Big Monmouth, below.
Pallone secured 37-million dollars in federal funding which will be matched by local state monies for the project. Also this week the Army Corp of Engineers announced a $19.5 million dollar project will be underway for the beaches of Ocean City, New Jersey. More sand down the proverbial toilet. "Insanity- doing the same thing and expecting different results.
What is missing, as always, is some kind of plan to curb the erosion. Now we know Mother Nature always wins, but why don't they have a solid dune construction and planting plan in place? Why don't they bury trees or telephone poles, or like they used to do old cars, to beef up
the underlying sandy structure further off the beach? I'm all for letting it go back to nature but some work other than pumping it over again and again might help. But it all comes down to money, and politics, and votes.
They say Pallone is a friend to the environment, and fish, and fishermen, and surfers, but that, to me, is a joke. How much money and sand has Pallone toyed with over his almost 40 years in office? We know crabs, forage fishes, and predator fish don't like it but the ocean front residents of Sea Bright, MB, Long Branch, Deal, Allenhurst, and Asbury Park, just to name a few, surely do.
I'm lucky to have caught some great years along "Jetty Country" when the rocks and the sand were great places to fish from, and there were fish to catch, and not just during the spring and fall runs. Resident fish spent the summers inshore and early mornings would always give up a bass or two before the beach invaders came. But those days are gone, as are a lot of the sharpies who called these town beaches home. It'll never be the same, never again.