NATURAL and CULTURAL FEATURES of MONMOUTH COUNTY

Highlands - mostly in Cheesequake State Park in Old Bridge, Conaskonck Point in Union Beach,
and the Bayshore Waterfront Park in Port Monmouth and Belford. (Reynolds, 2006). During the
1800s and early 1900s, tidal flats exposed along the Bay during the lowest spring tides were up
to a mile wide (USGS, 2007).
Bunkers (Atlantic Menhaden)
The first recorded bunker kill in the area was observed by a Dutch settler, Jasper Danckaerts, in a
creek in Staten Island in 1679 (Waldman, 1999). The largest fishkill on record in the coastal
waters of Monmouth County took place in 2000, when 3.9 million juvenile menhaden (peanut
bunkers) suffocated in Little Silver Creek in the Shrewsbury estuary (Reid et al., 2002). While
they are very sensitive indicators for pollution and algae blooms, large numbers of “bunkers”
also suffocate almost every summer when they are cornered by bluefish and other predators.
When they are frightened they defecate and pack themselves into tight schools; this uses up all
the remaining oxygen in the warm water where they are trapped by the circling bluefish (known
as a bluefish blitz) (Waldman, 1999). Bunker kills indicate a localized dissolved oxygen (DO)
drop to at least 2.0 mg/l (a good level of DO is 5.0 mg/l) (Zimmer, 1996).
“Moss bunkers” is derived from marsbanker or horse mackerel, from the early Dutch settlers;
menhaden are actually members of the herring family (Franklin, 2007; Waldman, 1999).
Bunkers are also called shad, fatback, and pogie or pogy (not porgy), from "pauhagen," the word
for fertilizer used by the Abenaki tribe of Maine (Franklin, 2007). In fact, the Native Americans
of Massachusetts may have taught the Pilgrims to use bunkers as fertilizer when planting corn
(Franklin, 2007). Bunkers that are caught commercially, known as reduction fishing, are
“reduced” to fish meal, proteins, and oils (including omega vitamins); are used as animal feed
and in cosmetics, and since colonial days, as fertilizer (Franklin, 2001).
From mid June through the early fall of 2007, a record 11 bunker kills occurred in the Bayshore
and the Shrewsbury River, 3 estimated in the hundreds of thousand to million range. Newspaper
pictures showed dead peanut bunker (juveniles) littering the phragmites along Matawan Creek in
Keyport like cherry blossoms, in spite of average water quality and dissolved oxygen. The only
unusual condition that year was that the water temperature had spiked to 75 o F by Memorial Day
(as recorded at the USGS station at Keansburg), which had contributed to a significant diatom
bloom in Sandy Hook Bay, the first to occur during the Memorial Day weekend in 10 years. In
2008, bunker and other baitfish were predominately spotted by fisherman in the ocean south of
Long Branch rather than in the Bay. There were only a few minor bunker kills in local estuaries
that year, mostly linked to the bacteria Vibrio ordalii and Photobacterium damselae, which cause
respiratory disease in fish, not humans (USFWS Fish Health Center, Lamar, Pennsylvania,
2008).
A 2001 law prohibiting reduction fishing by commercial trawlers within 1.2 nautical miles of the
NJ shoreline went into effect in 2002. Bunkers reproduce at age 3, so there have been more than
2 full generations of bunkers since then. Since 2005, the numbers of bunkers have been
increasing along NJ, and have reached the highest level recorded by NOAA from 1985 through
2008 (Eilperin, 2009; Hohn, 2009). The local abundance of bunkers may be attracting more
dolphins to the NJ coast, such as the pod of 16 that moved into the Navesink and Shrewsbury
estuaries from June 2008 until January 2009 (Eilperin, 2009). Rep. Jim Saxton, R-NJ., and Rep.
Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md, introduced a bill in 2008 ( H.R. 3840) that would impose a moratorium
and would prohibit commercial menhaden fishing in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, which