Marine life in New Jersey

Eco Profile: Hudson-Raritan Estuary

Oil Spills in Delaware Bay

ECO Profile: Delaware Bay

OIL POLLUTION Cases
IN New Jersey

Recreational Boaters
& Oil Pollution

Marine Life in New Jersey

New Jersey’s coastline stretches 127 miles from Sandy Hook in the north to Cape May in the south. While the coast is home to more than fifty towns and cities, the waters just offshore are teeming with a wide variety of marine life.
​
Coastal waters, which stretch from inland rivers and bays out to the edge of the continental shelf, are among the most biologically productive areas of the world. While these waters are only about 10 percent of the ocean’s surface area, they contain almost half of all the microscopic plants in the seas.

Photo Credit: CGP

​NJ Wildlife Spotlight: Marine Mammals

Humans aren’t the only mammals that enjoy New Jersey’s Atlantic coastline.
​A wide variety of marine mammals visit the New Jersey shore year round.

Photo Credit: NOAA

The best time to see humpback, fin, and right whales along the New Jersey coastline is in the fall.

Harbor Seal. Photo Source: Andreas Trepte

Harbor, harp and grey seals are mostly commonly found along Barnegat Bay and New Jersey's northern coastline.  Populations from Maine and Eastern Canada often spend their winter months along the Jersey shore!

Photo Credit: NOAA NMFS

In the summer, dolphins are often seen frolicking along the New Jersey shore, particularly to the south near Cape May.  

 

Eco-Profile:
​
The Hudson-Raritan Estuary

The Hudson-Raritan Estuary is where the Hudson, Hackensack, Passaic, Rahway, and Raritan rivers come together and mix with the Atlantic Ocean.

The Hudson-Raritan Estuary contains one of the best natural harbors in the world and is home to the Port of New York and New Jersey, the third busiest in the United States.

While serving the New York metropolitan area, most of the port facilities are in New Jersey, making it a key economic contributor to the Garden State.
​
The Hudson-Raritan Estuary is also heavily polluted. Lax pollution laws in the late 19th and early 20th century and nearly constant ship traffic have significantly impacted the area.

The Hudson - Raritan Estuary is one of the busiest ports in the US.

Oyster serve as a natural form of water filtration. Photo Credit: National Museum of the American Indian

Just one oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day, explains the NY/NY Baykeepers, which is leading efforts to return oysters to the bay by creating sustainable habitat in order to monitor and improve the health of the estuary’s eco-system. 

Wildlife Spotlight: Oysters

Oysters are a keystone species and are important to the survival of the estuary ecosystem as a whole.
​
They provide an important food source and habitat for many other creatures. Oysters also act as a natural filtration system for polluted water by straining nutrients from water as they feed.

Oyster reefs were once plentiful in the Hudson-Raritan Estuary.  Unfortunately, due to their popularity as a food source and the use of their shells for building materials and chicken feed, the oyster population was greatly reduced by the end of the 19th century. Intense pollution in the area during the early 20th century also contaminated the oysters, creating a public health problem.

The Arthur Kill Oil Spill

In January, 1990, a pipe from the Exxon oil refinery began leaking into the Arthur Kill, spilling approximately 567,000 gallons of oil.  The Arthur Kill is a tidal strait separating Staten Island from mainland New Jersey. It is a major navigational channel, and thousands of oil tankers pass through it each year.

The immediate casualty list included thousands of fish and crabs and more than 700 birds. The oil spill was particularly damaging for birds like snowy egrets and glossy ibises, which could no longer dine on the crabs devastated by the massive oil spill.
​
Several years before the spill, a group of biologists had begun studying the Arthur Kill habitat closely. When the spill happened, it provided these scientists with the unique opportunity to research the spill’s impact, since they had an area that was studied closely before and after a major oil spill.

Photo Credit: NOAA Ocean Service Education

Oil Pollution Cases in NJ

These violations are likely just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the illegal dumping of oil from ships.  

CLIPPER TROJAN
​
In June, 2006, US Coast Guard inspectors discovered a false oil record book aboard the Clipper Trojan Tanker in the port of Newark, New Jersey.

The false record book concealed the fact that the ship had been dumping oily sludge and oiled bilge water into the sea in violation of both US and international laws.

In June, 2008, the Danish shipping company Clipper Marine Services pled guilty to the violations and was ordered to pay a $3.25 million fine. The ship’s chief engineer was sentenced to five months in prison.
​
The company was also made to outfit its ships with state-of-the-art oily water separators and implement a new discharge monitoring system in five vessels. Clipper Marine Services also paid $1.5 million for the protection, study, and restoration of marine resources in New Jersey.

EVERGREEN INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING
​
Evergreen’s environmental crimes were discovered in March, 2001, when a team of US Coast Guard officials traced a 500 gallon spill in the Columbia River to the Ever Group, one of the cargo ships in Evergreen’s fleet.

Several months later, when an illegal discharge pipe was discovered on the Ever Given, another ship owned by the company, it kicked off a mass investigation of Evergreen vessels in Los Angeles, CA; Newark, NJ; Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; and Charleston, SC.

Evergreen International paid a fine of $25 million in 2001 for deliberate vessel pollution and admitted that at least seven company ships had dumped oily waste in US waters, and its employees had falsified records and lied to Coast Guard officials.  

Photo Credit: Osvaldo Morales Cáceres

SNOW FLOWER
​
In March, 2009, Holy House Shipping AB was ordered to pay a one million dollar fine and a $400,000 payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for dumping oily waste and concealing the illegal discharges.

The chief engineer was sentenced to probation and paid a fine of $8,000.

Eco-Profile: Delaware Bay​

The Delaware Bay is New Jersey’s largest estuary, mixing fresh water from the Delaware River with the saltwater of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Bay makes up New Jersey’s southern border, beginning with Cape May in New Jersey and Cape Henlopen in Delaware, and stretching northwest to the Delaware River, touching on Wilmington, Delaware; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Trenton, New Jersey.

Like all of New Jersey’s coastline, the Delaware Bay is important both economically and ecologically.
​
One of the world’s largest freshwater port systems, approximately 85% of all oil shipped to the East Coast of the United States passes through the Delaware Bay.
Every year, more than 70 million tons of cargo is also moved through these waters.

Delaware Bay. Source: Smallbones

Delaware Bay is of global importance for wildlife migration. Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrating birds pass through, stopping along the shore.   Westerly wind currents act as a funnel for migrating birds, carrying them over Delaware Bay. The marshes and tributaries of the Delaware River also provide a stopover and wintering habitat for more than 200 species of migrating birds, including Canada geese. 

​But air currents aren’t the only reason that migrating birds stop here.  The bay is home to the world’s largest horseshoe crab spawning event.

Horseshoe Crabs mating in Delaware Bay. Credit: CGP

Horseshoe Crabs ​

Tens of thousands of horseshoe crabs climb onto the bay's beaches to lay their eggs in the spring. 

​One female crab can lay as many as 90,000 eggs each season, creating an important food source for hungry migrating birds like the Red Knot. 

Horseshoe crabs also play an important role in protecting human health. Horseshoe crab blood is used by the medical industry in a test to determine whether IV drugs, vaccines, and medical devices contain harmful bacterium that can withstand regular methods of sterilization. The test can also detect contagions like spinal meningitis and urinary tract infections.

THE RED KNOT

Red Knot is a tiny red bellied bird that is one of the planet's greatest long distance travelers.  These birds winter in the Antarctic,  summer in the Arctic, and stop in Delaware Bay, roughly in the middle of their planet spanning flight, to fuel up on crab eggs, often doubling their body weight, so they can continue to make one of the longest migrations on earth.

There are three subspecies of Red Knots in North America, and they all are in decline. The populations wintering in South America dropped over 50% from the mid-1980s to 2003, and are listed as a federally threatened species. 

In January 2018, scientists recorded only 9,840 birds making the journey from Tierra Del Fuego to Delaware Bay. This was a 25% decrease on the number recorded in January 2017. The problem, according to Bird Life International, is that low water temperatures in May 2017 delayed the Crabs breeding schedule, so the Red Knots’ food just wasn’t there in time.  ​

Red Knot in Delaware Bay. Credit: CGP

A Female Blue Crab. Photo Credit: South Carolina Dept of Natural Resources

Blue Crabs

Crabs are abundant all along the New Jersey coast, from the Hackensack River to the Delaware Bay. 

​Blue Crabs, however, seem to be the most beloved species in New Jersey. A study by Rutgers University reports that nearly three-quarters of the state's saltwater fishermen go crabbing, which comprises roughly 30 percent of all marine fishing activity.

The Blue Crab's scientific name is Callinectes sapidus.  Translated from Latin, this means 'beautiful savory swimmer.' Males have blue claws and females have red-tipped claws.

Other crabs found in the Delaware Bay include hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs, rock crabs, spider crabs, ghost crabs, and mole crabs.

Delaware Bay and Oil Spills

Given its rich biodiversity and importance as a commercial hub, the Delaware Bay is uniquely vulnerable to oil spills.

This vulnerability was exposed in 2004, when an oil tanker named the Athos I stuck a submerged anchor, spilling 265,000 gallons of Venezuelan crude oil into the Delaware River near Philadelphia, PA. Some 115 miles of shoreline were affected.
​
Waterfowl were covered with oil and killed by the spill, which occurred near Little Tinicum Island and the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge. These areas are used year-round by some waterfowl and are occupied even more extensively during the fall and spring migrations along the Atlantic Flyway. Delaware's Pea Patch Island, which contains the largest heronry north of Florida on the East Coast, was also threatened by the spill.

Photo Credit: Delaware Estuary Watershed Database and Mapping Project

Diver covered in oil from the Athos I oil spill. Photo Credit: Delaware Estuary Watershed Database and Mapping Project

Because the Delaware Bay is a migratory hub, the impact of an oil spill or pollution event varies depending on the time of year. The bay is most at risk during the fall and spring, when the most wildlife migrates through.

In the wake of this disaster, citizens and lawmakers called for tougher fines and penalties for oil spills in New Jersey waters.  In 2005, the State of New Jersey raised the cap on oil spill liability to $1,200 dollars per gross ton for vessels, with a maximum of $50 million dollars.

Other major oil spills into Delaware Bay include:
• Mystra spilled 10,000 gallons of crude oil in 1997
• Anitra spilled 42,000 gallons of crude oil in 1996
• Kentucky spilled 13,000 gallons of crude oil in 1994