{"id":9173,"date":"2016-08-23T02:10:49","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T06:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/?p=9173"},"modified":"2016-08-23T02:10:49","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T06:10:49","slug":"day-on-the-dredge-take-a-tour-of-the-dredge-boat-replenishing-n-j-beaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/08\/day-on-the-dredge-take-a-tour-of-the-dredge-boat-replenishing-n-j-beaches\/","title":{"rendered":"Day on the Dredge: Take a Tour of the Dredge Boat Replenishing N.J. Beaches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Aboard the Liberty Island Dredge Boat in the Atlantic Ocean\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/179859289?dnt=1&app_id=122963\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As residents of Ocean County\u2019s northern barrier island await the start of a federal beach replenishment project that will build 22 foot protective dunes and 200 foot-long beaches from Point Pleasant Beach to Seaside Park, Long Beach Island residents are in the midst of the same project on their 18 mile-long island.<\/p>\n<p>The hulking, 325-foot hopper dredge has been patrolling the waters off Long Beach Island on and off for the past year, taking sand from the ocean floor and using its powerful engines to pump it through a network of pipes to the beaches a few miles west. There, crews spread the sand with bulldozers and similar pieces of heavy equipment with the goal of building a protective dune to prevent breaches in barrier islands like the one that occurred in Mantoloking in Superstorm Sandy \u2013 largely identified as the event during the storm that led to massive flooding on both sides of Barnegat Bay.<\/p>\n<p>Life on the dredge boat is one that brings together varying fields of expertise, from mechanics, to welders, to machine operators, to engineers. In charge of the operation at sea is Capt. James \u201cWoody\u201d Hoffman, a Panama City, Fla. resident who describes his vessel as a \u201c24\/7 operation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a dangerous place,\u201d he said, lauding his crew \u2013 fellow employees of the Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company \u2013 for adhering to strict safety codes, ranging from donning gloves every time they climb the vessel\u2019s steep ladders, to wearing hard hats and life jackets in various situations. \u201cThere can be hydraulic fuel making things slipper, some of the drops are pretty steep too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The boat\u2019s crew is 19 men and women who stay on the vessel for two weeks at a time, alternating long shifts that include both day and nighttime hours. They are brought out to the dredger on board the St. John\u2019s River, a crew transport boat that is docked at the Lighthouse Marina in Barnegat Light.<\/p>\n<p>The Liberty Island, a 5,200 ton vessel, has a draft of 16 feet empty and 28 feet with a full load of material.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fb-share-button fcbkbttn_large_button \" data-href=\"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/2016\/08\/day-on-the-dredge-take-a-tour-of-the-dredge-boat-replenishing-n-j-beaches\/\" data-type=\"button_count\" data-size=\"large\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Check out the ins-and-outs of how beach replenishment actually works&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[86,24,2376,2379,432,2378,182,1466,2377,1465,942,2301],"class_list":["post-9173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shore-environment","tag-beach-replenishment","tag-brick-nj-news","tag-dredge","tag-dredge-boat","tag-dunes","tag-great-lakes-dredge-and-dock","tag-jersey-shore","tag-lbi","tag-liberty-island","tag-long-beach-island","tag-new-jersey","tag-nj"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/IMG_5702-e1471932492316.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgt2Ft-2nX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shorebeat.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}