Debbie Mans, executive director of the N.Y/N.J. Baykeeper, headquartered in Keyport, will report on the health of New Jersey and New York bays, especially Raritan Bay, 6:30 p.m. June 25 at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft. The presentation, open to the public, will include the college’s students and the members of the N.J. Friends of Clearwater and the Jersey Shore (Monmouth) Group of the Sierra Club.
Mans also will discuss the ups and downs of her organization’s disputes with the NJDEP over Baykeeper’s attempt to determine if ecologically important oysters, whose beds were decimated by overharvesting and pollution, can be repopulated in Raritan Bay.
The DEP, having been criticized by the USEPA, shut down the Baykeeper’s effort to reintroduce the oyster.
The DEP claimed that if poachers illegally took the oysters from the bay’s polluted waters, the contaminated oysters could make people ill and jeopardize the state’s entire shellfish industry. The U.S. Navy came to Mans’ rescue, which she shall relate in full .
Raritan Bay had been an extremely rich and productive marine habitat until land-based pollution and habitat destruction in the latter half of the 20th Century contaminated its pristine waters and harmed or killed many marine species. State and federal pollution controls have improved the bay’s water quality, but the state recommends not eating fish caught in its waters and prohibits harvesting all shellfish.
At the Lincroft meeting, a cash buffet begins at 6 p.m. with Mans’ presentation at 6:30 p.m.