More than three-quarters of the wetlands in southeastern New Jersey is saltwater tidal marshes, which provide a critical habitat for commercially important species of fish and crabs, as well as for birds such as ospreys and bald eagles.
Without these marshes, the water quality in area back bays and nearby beaches would suffer, and the amount of crabs, flounder and other locally harvested seafood would be significantly less, if not gone all together.
“The wetlands do a lot for the water quality and the ecology,” said Fred Akers, director of the Great Egg Harbor Watershed Association and a wetlands advocate, as his feet sloshed through the rising tide on a marshy island near the mouth of English Creek. “I think the key ingredient of the wetlands is the vegetation that becomes the bottom of the food chain. Everything else that lives here relies on it. The salt hay even uptakes (absorbs) the pollutants.”
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...cle_b4d308fe-ff79-11e1-9a46-001a4bcf887a.html
Without these marshes, the water quality in area back bays and nearby beaches would suffer, and the amount of crabs, flounder and other locally harvested seafood would be significantly less, if not gone all together.
“The wetlands do a lot for the water quality and the ecology,” said Fred Akers, director of the Great Egg Harbor Watershed Association and a wetlands advocate, as his feet sloshed through the rising tide on a marshy island near the mouth of English Creek. “I think the key ingredient of the wetlands is the vegetation that becomes the bottom of the food chain. Everything else that lives here relies on it. The salt hay even uptakes (absorbs) the pollutants.”
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/...cle_b4d308fe-ff79-11e1-9a46-001a4bcf887a.html
