RCTB Welcomes New Gardeners

The Barnegat Bay Shellfish Restoration Program’s 2011 class of volunteers completed their requirements and earned their certificates as official shellfish gardeners. Gef Flimlin and Cara Musico presented the graduates with their certificates in a brief ceremony last night. Congratulations to all the new gardeners.

Pete Anwander Tyler Anwander Joe Bavosa

John Gibson Steven Hardeski Charlene Lentini

Melinda Most Ed Nowicki Darlene Price

Chirstopher Quinn Monica Shaw Mindy Voss

RCTB Volunteers Aid NJ DEP in Planting Clams

Reclam the Bay volunteers Jeffery Silady, Marty Sedlacko and Jim Merritt using the "clambo", and the pontoon boat helped NJ DEP Bureau of Shellfish biologist Dr. Gustavo Calvo plant clams.

They spread over 370,000 small (20 mm) clams in the 1900 acre Sedge Island Marine Conservation Zone. These clams are a big addition to the 150.000 plus clams that we grew in our shellfish lease and planted previously. The photos show the clams in the boats prior to planting.

Bay Blitz at IBSP Upweller

The members of the IBSP upweller team got an early start on the Barnegat Bay Blitz yesterday. They scoured the wetland area near the upweller site and picked up over two dozen glass bottles, two tires, a fire extinguisher, several caps and various other articles of clothing, and even an outboard motor! This was all done in a little over an hour. Pictured below is some of the crew counting their loot.

Here are some more photos from the clam harvest at Waretown.

Bruce Beverage Barnegat Bay Buddy

On Saturday during the clam harvest at Waretown, RCTB member Bruce Beverage was eagerly harvesting a variety of marine life. As the predator nets were dragged to shore Bruce was able to catch the live animals the were entangled in the nets and place them in a large transparent container. Several children and their parents were very intrigued to see the different form of life found in the bay.

Bruce is our fairs and festivals chairman and has attended most of the events for the last three years. He became much more interested in marine life found in the bay after hearing the questions asked by the public at those fairs. When he did not know the answer to a specific question he would go to his computer and “google” an answer. (Is google a verb). After he gathered a great deal of information he decided to put it all on a web site in order to share what he had learned with other interested people. The web site is called Barnegat Bay Shellfish. Check it out.

Waretown Clam Harvest Huge Success

The weather finally co-operated and over a dozen RCTB members made their way to our Waretown clam lease site on Saturday October 15th. The fall clam harvest begin about 9:30 am and lasted until a little past 12:30 pm. The predator nets were brought to shore. We then brought up over 18,000 clams planted in 2010. They will now be broadcast on undisclosed approved sites though out the Bay. Daniel Nee a reporter for the Brick Patch, an online local news outlet, was invited to observe the harvest and he was able to video our endeavors. To see the video click the this link

Kayak Raffle Huge Success

Our first kayak raffle was a huge success thanks to the efforts of Donna Franzoso and the generous donation of the kayak by the folks at Richie & Page Distributing, Ally Meehan, vice president of sales and Mike Desider, area sales manager. The winning raffle ticket was drawn at the annual Chowderfest last Sunday October 2. The lucky winner was Dave Della-Croce from Langhorne, PA. The winner for the highest individual ticket sales will be announced and the prize cooler will be presented at our next monthly meeting on October 18.