Barnegat Bay

The body of a man was found this morning in Barnegat Bay, officials say. It is believed to be Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Nicholas Holmes, 25, who fell off a pleasure boat Saturday evening during an off-duty outing. The Coast Guard said it was awaiting an autopsy for positive identification. The body was found in the water at Berkeley Island County Park, on the western shore of the bay. Holmes and another man were thrown into the water when their 23-foot pleasure boat struck a wave in the bay. The other man surfaced, Holmes did not. The Coast Guard searched for Holmes for 26 hours before giving up Sunday night.

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A body recovered from Barnegat Bay is that of a Coast Guardsman who fell off a speedboat last weekend, authorities have confirmed. The death of Petty Officer Nicholas Holmes, 25, has been ruled an accident, state police said. An autopsy found he died from asphyxia. Holmes and another man were tossed from the 23-foot boat after being rocked by a wave left by another vessel Saturday night. No speed limit is posted in the area. Holmes was a machinery technician at Air Station Atlantic City.

POINT PLEASANT, N.J. - He's no David Hasselhoff, and "Big Al" Wutkowski doesn't know any women who have one-piece red swimsuits. But the Point Pleasant sport fisherman and boater is becoming a real-life baywatcher. The American Littoral Society, a New Jersey shore environmental group, is enlisting him as its first Barnegat Bay guardian, sworn to be the eyes and ears of environmentalists and law enforcement on the endangered waterway. He'll be out on the water looking for illegal or dangerous boating activities, sources of pollution, and unapproved development along the coast.

The announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that a nutrient limit for Barnegat Bay is possible within the next three years is good news. We don't need more studies to tell us the bay is in trouble. We need a plan for cleaning up plant nutrients flowing into the bay, and it needs to be a top priority of Gov. Christie's administration. Otherwise, we need the EPA to hold New Jersey accountable. A recent state appellate court ruling reaffirmed that the state can protect environmentally sensitive areas from sewer-service expansion.

TUCKERTON, N.J. - For years, a cadre of sportsmen, boaters, scientists, and other observers told anyone who would listen that big problems were brewing in Barnegat Bay. They could see changes, they insisted: dwindling fish populations, murky water, and declining plant life in the back-bay waters that spawning species use as a nursery. Some said they could even smell the problem, as the "healthy, earthy" marsh mud scent turned to something else entirely. Many bay users - from environmentalists to fishermen - attributed problems to the Oyster Creek nuclear power station, which daily sucks up and then releases 1.4 billion gallons of water and alters the bay's temperature and other water conditions.

TOMS RIVER - Barnegat Bay is in trouble, and the economy of the region that depends on it could be badly hurt if things don't change, New Jersey's chief environmental official said Monday. Environmental Commissioner Bob Martin noted that the bay is a huge part of New Jersey's $35.5 billion tourism-based economy. He said pollution from lawns and storm sewers is killing it. "The ecological health of Barnegat Bay is in decline, threatening the economic health of the region," he said at a hearing.

In a move that seems to fly in the face of its moniker - the Garden State - New Jersey is getting ready to put the pinch on fertilizer. Bills that would limit fertilizer's use on lawns - restricting everything from what kind can be applied, to when and where it can be put down - are before the state Legislature, and are shaping up to be the nation's most restrictive. Despite some industry opposition, supporters expect to have a final version on the governor's desk by year's end. A major focus is to help turn around troubled Barnegat Bay in Ocean County.

More than 500,000 people live in Ocean County, and that number swells to more than one million in the summer as vacationers from Philadelphia and New York pour into the towns surrounding the Barnegat Bay. And as dizzying real estate prices drive development in this fastest-growing county in New Jersey, Chris Claus said, the battle cry from environmentalists has grown louder: Save the bay, or the reasons why people want to live here will disappear....

Chris Smith and David Friedland are poking holes in the perfectly manicured lawn of Constantine Afansief's home 10 miles west of Barnegat Bay, in Ocean County. Row upon row of compact new homes line the street. Each was carved out of uplands once thick with pine trees and hardwoods. After the trees were ripped out, the topsoil was scraped and covered with sod. To the untrained eye, the lawn appears perfect. Yet when Smith tries to force a slim metal rod into the grass, to measure its ability to drain, the rod resists after an inch or two. "The soil is really compact here," says Smith, a soil scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Environmentalists intend to challenge state approval of a 1,474-house subdivision, with an 18-hole golf course and a strip mall, proposed for the ecologically sensitive pine forests along the Jersey Shore. The development, to go up in Waretown, Ocean County, is so large it would increase the community's population of 6,000 by 40 percent. Late last month, the state Department of Environmental Protection gave preliminary approval to the 951-acre development, despite objections from the Pinelands Commission and experts on coastal preservation.

SEA ISLE CITY, N.J. - The collapsing hotels looked like tipped-over wedding cakes sliding into a furious sea. Brightly colored summer cottages were transformed into houseboats. And by the end of Day One, the massive Sisters of Mercy convent was a pile of rubble. It was March 6, 1962, and Bart Milano awakened in Sea Isle City to the howling onshore winds that were ravaging the Jersey Shore and the rest of the Mid-Atlantic coast. He peered out his window at 6:30 a.m. and saw his front porch - floating away.

TRENTON - The state will spend $1 million to buy a Boy Scout camp near Barnegat Bay to prevent development there and to help protect one of the nation's most ecologically fragile waterways from the pollution that development would bring. On the first anniversary of its 10-point plan to improve the health of the struggling bay, the state Department of Environmental Protection announced Thursday that its Green Acres program would buy the development rights to the 436-acre Joseph A. Citta camp from the scouts.

BAY HEAD, N.J. - Everyone knows Barnegat Bay is in trouble. The real question is, how bad are things? To get answers, the state Department of Environmental Protection will team with research institutions across the state to carry out 10 studies of aspects of Barnegat Bay to get a comprehensive view of the health of the struggling waterway. The answers won't all be in until 2014. The studies will examine such things as pollution nutrients in the water, crabs and clams, and the prevalence of stinging jellyfish and algae blooms.

TOMS RIVER, N.J. - Flood tides, hurricane-driven winds, and the change of seasons may drive this year's onslaught of sea nettles - tens of millions of them - out of Barnegat Bay. But researchers from Montclair State University who study the stinging species say it will likely be a short reprieve. Chrysaora quinquecirrha - the white, saucer-shaped nettle with long, thin tentacles - is a stinging jellyfish that has always been a part of the Barnegat Bay ecosystem. Commonly found on the East Coast, the jellyfish can grow to six to eight inches wide.

The announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that a nutrient limit for Barnegat Bay is possible within the next three years is good news. We don't need more studies to tell us the bay is in trouble. We need a plan for cleaning up plant nutrients flowing into the bay, and it needs to be a top priority of Gov. Christie's administration. Otherwise, we need the EPA to hold New Jersey accountable. A recent state appellate court ruling reaffirmed that the state can protect environmentally sensitive areas from sewer-service expansion.

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - A body recovered from Barnegat Bay is that of a Coast Guardsman who fell off a speedboat last weekend, authorities have confirmed. The death of Petty Officer Nicholas Holmes, 25, has been ruled an accident, state police said. An autopsy found he died from asphyxia. Holmes and another man were tossed from the 23-foot boat after being rocked by a wave left by another vessel Saturday night. No speed limit is posted in the area. Holmes was a machinery technician at Air Station Atlantic City.

The body of a man was found this morning in Barnegat Bay, officials say. It is believed to be Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class Nicholas Holmes, 25, who fell off a pleasure boat Saturday evening during an off-duty outing. The Coast Guard said it was awaiting an autopsy for positive identification. The body was found in the water at Berkeley Island County Park, on the western shore of the bay. Holmes and another man were thrown into the water when their 23-foot pleasure boat struck a wave in the bay. The other man surfaced, Holmes did not. The Coast Guard searched for Holmes for 26 hours before giving up Sunday night.

TOMS RIVER - Barnegat Bay is in trouble, and the economy of the region that depends on it could be badly hurt if things don't change, New Jersey's chief environmental official said Monday. Environmental Commissioner Bob Martin noted that the bay is a huge part of New Jersey's $35.5 billion tourism-based economy. He said pollution from lawns and storm sewers is killing it. "The ecological health of Barnegat Bay is in decline, threatening the economic health of the region," he said at a hearing.

POINT PLEASANT, N.J. - He's no David Hasselhoff, and "Big Al" Wutkowski doesn't know any women who have one-piece red swimsuits. But the Point Pleasant sport fisherman and boater is becoming a real-life baywatcher. The American Littoral Society, a New Jersey shore environmental group, is enlisting him as its first Barnegat Bay Guardian, sworn to be the eyes and ears of environmentalists and law enforcement on the endangered waterway. He'll be out on the water looking for illegal or dangerous boating activities, sources of pollution, and unapproved development along the coast.

POINT PLEASANT, N.J. - He's no David Hasselhoff, and "Big Al" Wutkowski doesn't know any women who have one-piece red swimsuits. But the Point Pleasant sport fisherman and boater is becoming a real-life baywatcher. The American Littoral Society, a New Jersey shore environmental group, is enlisting him as its first Barnegat Bay guardian, sworn to be the eyes and ears of environmentalists and law enforcement on the endangered waterway. He'll be out on the water looking for illegal or dangerous boating activities, sources of pollution, and unapproved development along the coast.