Sedge "Open House"

I write this sitting in my “office” (desk in the corner of my bedroom) looking out over the Bay in South Seaside Park. This is the height of the April 2007 northeaster. The wind is “blowing like stink” (about 30 kts with gusts to 40) Most of the rain passed us to the north so our streets are only moderately flooded. It snowed some a little while ago but has now changed over to rain. Our beach was getting eroded last night at high when the wind was strong NE but now it has switched to NW so the ocean is calm while the waves are so high in the bay the wild wind blown white water it looks like the ocean did yesterday.

Ten members of Friends of Sedge, including three new interns, worked all day Saturday to get everything ready for our first group (Students from Rutgers will be arriving Thursday night.) Before leaving the dock at Island Beach, we did some work in the parking lot to replace some of the fill eroded away by the winter storms. (There is more work to be done here as much of the sand has moved into the boat slip making it difficult if not impossible to get the pontoon boat in at low tide.)

Once we got to the island we quickly set about working on many projects. We turned on the hot water and the stove. We washed all the dishes and replaced them in clean closets. We took all the kayaks out of the boat house and swept the floor. We launched the jon boat, put on the outboard and the interns had their first lesson in small boat handling.

After lunch we went to work on the shellfish. We checked the six predator screens covering the 600,000 10mm clams on the shellfish lease to the west of the house. They are still in place but are beginning to get fouled even though we cleaned them three weeks ago. Then we turned our attention to the shellfish at the dock. We scrubbed 8 bags of oysters removing thousands of 1 MM blue mussels growing on the outside and blocking water flow. We separated some of the oysters into additional bags to avoid over crowding. We cleaned the Taylor Float. We were disappointed to find that about 40% of one bag of 20mm clams has died- perhaps as a result of the poor circulation of water due to fouling by mussels, algae, and other organisms. But when you consider mortality in the wild is more like 95% we are not doing too badly.

Although we had intended to spend the night, the threat of the pending storm made leaving seem like a good idea. Even though the tide was blown out and we had to walk to pull the pontoon boat over the sand bar, this was a wise choice. We are now in the middle of a major storm and, had we waited, we would have been forced to stay on the island until it blew itself out. As it was we came back to my house and made clam chowder. GREAT IDEA!

Thank you so much to all the members of FOS , both new and experienced. We would not be able to run our programs if it were not for your help. Jim