New Jersey Fishermen, beach builders fight for ancient underwater sand hills

Just a few miles off New Jersey’s coast  are a series of underwater hills on the ocean floor, made of perfect quality beach sand tens of thousands of years old. The value of these ancient sand hills to sea life, fishermen, scientists and beach-building engineers has set up a fight between those who would protect them and those who would mine them. And that battle is only expected to intensify as rising sea levels are expected to magnify. Meanwhile, every beach on New Jersey’s 127-mile coast will soon have been engineered or replenished after 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers promising to keep replenishing them for another 50 years. There are only two projects left to do – the Absecon Island project covering Longport through Atlantic City, and the Monmouth/Ocean counties project covering Manasquan to Barnegat inlets. Read the story here 14:12

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