The American Littoral Society is a New Jersey-based coastal conservation non-profit organization that’s been working to protect our shoreline since its founding in 1961.
“We do education, outreach, advocacy, conservation, restoration – basically anything to protect the coast and keep people engaged with the coast,” said Shane Godshall, a habitat restoration project manager with the organization.
Godshall said he’s been with the group for the past 12 years, working on projects in the Delaware Bay.
Though the non-profit has “American” in its name, their focus is mainly on New Jersey’s waters.
“I always say we are national in aspiration and regional in application,” Godshall said.
He said they do have paid members all around the country and they sometimes work to shape and influence national policies, but their hands-on work is primarily carried out in coastal areas of New Jersey, New York and more recently Delaware.
Their main headquarters is further north in New Jersey, up in Atlantic Highlands, but Godshall works more locally out of the group’s office in Millville.
The organization is involved with a number of different coastal projects , from cleaning up trash and debris to fish tagging programs.
But Godshall said his focus is on protecting beaches suffering from erosion.The ultimate reason to worry about beach erosion is the loss of habitat for horseshoe crabs, who lay their eggs on those beaches, and the migratory shorebird populations that feed on those eggs.
“We’ve been rebuilding beaches for the past 12 years, he said.
Godshall said they do that by adding truckloads of sand and then working to keep that new sand from washing away. One of the ways they do that is through the creation of reefs that trap the sand near the beach.
“What they seem to do a real good job of is keeping the sand in the inter-tidal zone,” he said. “We get a nice sandy bottom and that creates a nice habitat for horseshoe crabs and then ultimately some foraging habitat for the shorebirds as well.”
The organization is working towards the installation of a new reef off Thompson’s Beach in the Delmont section of Maurice River Township this October.
The reefs are built from recycled oyster shells packed into nets bags.
In preparation for that operation, the group has been holding shell bagging events, where volunteers help prepare those reef building blocks. They recently held one event in June, and another is planned for July 19 in Port Norris.
“Every year we’re doing a project, if not two,” Godshall said. “We bring some much needed assistance to the bayshore region that’s often neglected because it’s in poorer communities and they don’t often meet the return on investment kind of calculations that get taken into account.”
If you’d like to volunteer for their next event, or learn more about the American Littoral Society and what they do, visit www.littoralsociety.org.
