We believe that we must protect Essential Fisheries Habitat but do not want to limit recreational fishing (including spearfishing) on them. There doesn't seem to be a reason to limit recreational fishing off New Jersey at this time. Our old wrecks and rock piles are damaged much more from commercial dragging and roller rigs. This letter is true today as it was 5 years ago since the sand replenishment for beaches has continued up and down our coast.
12/20/99
EFH Coordinator
Office of Habitat Conservation
National Marine Fisheries Service
1315 East West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910-3282
Dear EFH Coordinator,
This testimony is in response to the reopening of the comment period for Essential Fisheries Habitat that appeared in the Federal Register on November 8, 1999. The NJCDC is an organization of 28 sport diving clubs in New Jersey with a few clubs in nearby states.
Since over half the hard habitat off the N.J. coast is artificial habitat, shipwrecks, jetties and artificial reefs are considered the reefs of New Jersey. Our real concern is the major loss of shoreline fisheries habitat and shipwrecks associated with large scale sand replenishment projects. For example, the massive Sandy Hook to Barnegat Inlet Sand Replenishment Project is not quite complete at this time. The section from Sea Bright to Manasquan Inlet has already buried at least eight shipwrecks and will bury a total of ten wrecks when complete. Some of these wrecks were major reefs systems. It also buried the u/w habitat of over 80 jetties, each one of which was a focal point for marine life.
Each one of those jetties and each one of those shipwrecks had large populations of Tautog and other fish and lobsters associated with the hard habitat, and constituted the only hard habitat within miles in areas south of Deal NJ. The section from Manasquan Inlet to Seaside Park, if built, will bury another five shipwrecks and yet more jetties.
A project this massive required multiple large borrow areas denuding a number of square miles of ocean floor and killing millions of clams and other marine life. Unfortunately, in September of 1997 near Belmar Borrow Area Six (in Federal waters), yet another shipwreck was destroyed when the sand harvester Long Island actually lifted parts of a 150 year old shipwreck onto their barge. Nor did they report this as required by their contract with the COE. It was later reported to the State and COE by the N.J. Council of Diving Clubs. When I inspected the little that remained of the wreck on the bottom, the loran numbers indicated that the barge was operating outside of the borrow area.
Yet another problem concerning the borrow areas seems to be that there are no uniform standards as to how close a sand harvester or other project should go to a known shipwreck reef. The EPA established a 500 meter buffer zone around shipwrecks in the HARS (mud dumping which also destroys shipwrecks) after complaints by the NJCDC. In the Belmar Borrow areas, a mere 100 feet was used and there was no buffer zone around the perimeter of the borrow area, and in many places no side scan or remote sensing of the areas immediately adjacent to the borrow areas where the sand harvester may wandered off course. This may have led to the loss of the shipwreck reef near Belmar Borrow Area Six.
It may have taken thousands of years for the sand to accumulate in the offshore Belmar Borrow Areas. What happens if you then take away sand to a depth of 20 feet within 100 feet of a shipwreck leaving the shipwreck on a mound of sand 20 foot above the surrounding sand. Will the storms and currents level that mound in a relatively short period of time collapsing the shipwreck reef and opening the old wooden wreck to attacks by marine worms?
Therefore, the New Jersey Council of Diving Clubs respectfully requests NMFS (and the other fishery councils) to do the following:
1. Maintain language in your rules that designates shipwrecks, artificial reefs, jetties and other hard structure in the marine environment as potential Essential Fish Habitat (EFH), especially when it is the only hard structure for miles around.
2. Insist that if a sand replenishment project buries or otherwise destroys (accidentally or otherwise) a shipwreck or jetty structure (EFH), that project must replace or mitigate for that loss by a substitute structure. This should be done just offshore of the replenishment area in the case of sand replenishment (same general area) with proven reef building structure such as jetty boulders that will not be effected by storms. Obstacles should not be put in the way of a state in securing permits to replace EFH structure destroyed in a project.
3. NMFS should notify relevant fishery councils when it receives notification that projects are being considered that may destroy EFH so that they have a chance to respond.
Otherwise these councils will never know about the projects until the design phase is long past. NMFS or fishery councils should also coordinate with local dive boats or head boats to determine if any shipwrecks are in the area of the project, both the replenishment area and the borrow area. The COE specifically seems to have a problem detecting wrecks in the beach area. At least half of the known wrecks close to the beach in the section of the replenishment project from Sea Bright to Manasquan Inlet were not detected in their survey until they were told about it.
4. NMFS and fishery councils such as ASMFC, NEFMC, MAFC and relevant state agencies should meet with the ARMY Corps of Engineers, the EPA, Mineral Management Service and other interested parties to hammer out uniform standards as to how close sand mining operations should come to a shipwreck in a borrow area. It should not believe that sand harvesters are accurate in their positioning. The wreck destroyed near Belmar Borrow Area Six was at least a quarter of a mile outside of the borrow area based on Loran C numbers. The sand harvester barges I observed moved several miles an hour, must have weighed thousands of tons, and were several hundred feet long. To expect accuracy within a hundred feet or even two hundred feet is unrealistic.
5. The perimeter of the borrow area must have a realistic buffer area and that buffer area must be scanned and magged to determine if any wrecks are in it. A realistic buffer zone around targets within the borrow area must be worked out. Above all else, project design should require that spot checks be made to insure that the sand harvester is staying within the borrow area. This is not being done now and is not difficult to do because the bottom of a recently harvested area is some of the most unmistakable bottom for even a small boat with a simple depth recorder and good positioning system. Appropriate penalties for contractors that carelessly wander out of borrow areas or hit a wreck and do not report it should be enforced.
6. Finally, for Section 106 compliance of the NHPA, major targets within a borrow area or buffer zone as well as the replenishment area should be checked out by trained diver/archaeologists to determine what they are and a proper survey done if warranted. Avoidance cannot be assumed!
Sincerely
Jack Fullmer
Legislative Committee
NJCDC