Pallone said an oil spill off the Atlantic Coast would be devastating to coastal communities in New Jersey and up and down the Atlantic. Tourism season is here, the last thing we need is an oil spill, Pallone said.
According to figures that he provided, the Jersey Shore is home to over $700 billion in coastal properties, and the tourism industry generates almost half a million jobs, nearly 10% of New Jersey’s entire workforce. New Jersey’s commercial fishing industry generates over $7.9 billion annually, supporting over 50,000 jobs.
Department of Environmental Protection Acting Commissioner Shawn LaTourette, who attended the press conference held at the Asbury Park boardwalk, said the future is clean electric energy.
Credit: Don Manalo.
Red knots and sanderlings in flight; horseshoe crabs on beach
The quiet, empty beaches of South Jersey’s Delaware Bay shoreline will soon begin to stir with the sound of thousands of migrating shorebirds, pausing their long journeys from the Southern Hemisphere to the Canadian Arctic to refuel on the eggs of horseshoe crabs that emerge to spawn here each spring.
Along with this natural wonder comes a dedicated group of volunteers, called Shorebird Stewards, who assist biologists from the state and nonprofit organizations in their annual count of the bay’s most vulnerable migratory shorebirds, including the dunlin, sanderling, semipalmated sandpiper, short-billed dowitcher, ruddy turnstone and the red knot, a federally listed threatened species.