Credit: Courtesy of Rutgers Cooperative Extension

Gef Flimlin and Cara Muscio, marine agents with Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Ocean County, on the job in Barnegat Bay. They are devoted to keeping the bay a treasure for years to come.

While the world talks about combating climate change, Gef Flimlin and Cara Muscio, marine agents with Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Ocean County, are the real McCoy: environmental activists making a difference. Headquartered in a tiny office in Toms River, the duo spends their days rallying citizens, teachers, school children, and businesses in Monmouth, Ocean, and Atlantic counties with innovative tactics and sound programs to help save their beloved estuary – Barnegat Bay.

Over-fishing, pollution, and coastal development are causing unprecedented damage to Barneget Bay, a shallow, coastal lagoon that hugs roughly 30 miles of the Ocean County coastline. A decline in water quality has hurt fish and shellfish in the bay, decimating the commercial fishing industry.

 “We’ve lost 900 clammers in New Jersey during the last 20 years, predominately in Ocean County,” Flimlin said, “and the decline in clam populations is severe.”  

The fault lies mainly with development – in the last 60 years the Ocean County population has grown from 38,000 to 511,000, doubling in the summer. The strain has sent nutrients – in particular nitrogen – seeping from septic systems and fertilized lawns, as well as from the atmosphere itself, into the fragile ecosystems, allowing algae to thrive to the detriment of other species. When large mats of macro-algae die, oxygen is depleted from the water creating dead zones where life cannot exist.

Flimlin’s and Muscio’s goals are to prevent further damage to the bay, and ultimately, to strengthen its ecology and economy. The marine agents’ styles complement one another. Flimlin, a former meat inspector with Schikhaus in Kearny, which he quips “gave me my strong background in food science,” has a master’s degree in marine and environmental science from C.W. Post College. An agent with the Rutgers’ extension program since 1978, he oversees clam and oyster aquaculture and commercial fisheries operations. The droll Flimlin, whose publications carry titles such as “How to Buy Clam Seed … Without Getting Shucked!,” towers over the petite, serious Muscio, an aquatic biologist, who joined the Ocean County operation in 2004. Muscio, in charge of coastal water quality and recreation programming, holds a master’s degree from Old Dominion University. Her resume includes work with the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and assessing water quality for the city of Austin, Texas.

The jewel of the Ocean County operation is the Barnegat Bay Shellfish Restoration Program. Several years ago Flimlin attended a conference in Charleston, S.C., at which a marine agent presented the results of a restoration initiative that was making headway rehabilitating the Peconic Bay in Suffolk County, N.Y., by spawning shellfish with a volunteer workforce. Flimlin returned to New Jersey full of excitement. “Shellfish are naturally efficient at filtering silt and nutrients. People enjoy eating clams and oysters,” he said. “When you get people growing the shellfish, they want a good habitat. It was the perfect recipe: Use clams and oysters as teaching tools to get people to refocus their attention on the health of the bay.”

Flimlin approached the New Jersey Department of Environmental Projection (NJDEP) with the idea, and in 2005, Rutgers’ Cooperative Extension launched the Barnegat Bay Shellfish Restoration Program (BBSRP), in cooperation with the NJDEP’s Division of Fish and Wildlife Bureau of Shellfisheries. The program received initial funding from the County of Ocean and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Barnegat Bay National Estuary Program.