Join the Urban Coast Institute for a beach sweep in Asbury Park on Saturday, Aug. 23, from 6-8 p.m. Help us prevent plastics and litter from entering our ocean while connecting with our partners the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association and fellow beach lovers at the Jersey Shore! Click here for full details and registration.
Monmouth University marine and environmental biology and policy student Christopher Reigel was one of the dozens of students who presented posters at the School of Science’s 2025 Summer Research Program Symposium on Aug. 8. Watch above as Reigel discusses his summer research on improving the detection of the endangered Atlantic sturgeon in near-shore ocean environments with environmental DNA (eDNA).
Reigel’s project was supported by the School of Science and the Urban Coast Institute through a federal grant secured by Congressman Frank Pallone. Read the abstract below to learn more about his work.
Student & Major: Christopher Reigel, marine and environmental biology and policy
Faculty Mentors: Jason Adolf, Ph.D. and Elizabeth Clark, Department of Biology
Funding Sources: Monmouth University School of Science, Urban Coast Institute, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service-Northeast Fisheries Science Center 2024 Earmark Ecological Resilience in the Hudson-Raritan (Principal investigators: Jason Adolf and Tony MacDonald)
Abstract: The Atlantic sturgeon, Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus, is an endangered anadromous fish of historic ecological and commercial importance. Atlantic sturgeon are currently monitored using traditional surveying methods such as gillnetting and acoustic telemetry, which can be costly and logistically challenging to undertake, making it difficult to effectively monitor this species across their broad range. Environmental DNA (eDNA) has emerged as a useful complementary tool to traditional surveying for many aquatic species. A qPCR probe-based assay for the monitoring of Atlantic sturgeon has been published, but the authors concluded that the assay was not designed for use in low population density areas, making it less suitable for monitoring sturgeon during the time they are migrating through continental shelf waters. The objective of our study is to develop an optimized probe-based qPCR assay for Atlantic sturgeon that can successfully detect their presence in ocean water samples. Optimization measures included making the assay amplicon length shorter and modifying qPCR protocols. We have validated this assay in silico and are further validating it against DNA extracts from Atlantic sturgeon and closely related/cohabitating species (e.g. shortnosed sturgeon, menhaden, river herring, gizzard shad), as well as field samples where Atlantic sturgeon have been verified by capture or metabarcoding methods. Development of a more sensitive qPCR assay for Atlantic sturgeon will better allow tracking of this important species throughout its natural range.
You are invited to take part in a research study about how climate change is affecting the mental health and wellbeing of young adults in New Jersey. As you know, climate change is not only a global environmental crisis—it also impacts people on a deeply personal and emotional level, especially those living in communities that experience environmental injustice or climate-related disasters.
This study is being conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation in social work. It explores how feeling connected to your community might help buffer or protect against the stress and anxiety many young people feel about climate change. We are especially interested in how these experiences differ across neighborhoods and identities in New Jersey.
Your voice matters. By completing this survey, you’ll be helping researchers, policymakers, and community leaders better understand how to promote mental health and climate resilience—especially in communities that are most impacted by environmental and social injustices.
The survey includes questions about your thoughts and feelings related to climate change, your sense of connection to your community, and some background questions about you and where you live. It will take about 10 minutes to complete.
As a thank you, after completing the survey, you will have the option to enter a raffle to win up to $1,000 in Visa gift cards. To protect your privacy, your email will be collected separately and will not be connected to your survey responses in any way.
For questions about the survey, contact Urban Coast Institute Community Engagement and Outreach Specialist Rachel Forbes at rforbes@monmouth.edu.
The UCI’s signature annual event returns to Monmouth University’s historic Great Hall on Oct. 9. The theme of this year’s Future of the Ocean Symposium is “Exploring the Wine-Dark Sea – U.S. Ocean Science and Technology: Keys to Prosperity and Security.” Our 2025 Champion of the Ocean Awards Luncheon will directly follow.
This year we’ll also be celebrating the UCI’s 20th anniversary. Come and help us set sail to serve the University and our communities for the next two decades.
Visit our event page to view the current lineup of confirmed speakers and honorees and more information.
Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute (UCI) Director Tony MacDonald attended the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice, France, from June 9-13. UNOC 2025 brought together over 15,000 diverse stakeholders from governments, UN agencies, international NGOs, civil society and the private sector to discuss ways to accelerate action to conserve and sustainably use the ocean. In addition to representing the UCI, MacDonald attended in his role as chair of the National Academy of Science Ocean Studies Board’s U.S. Decade Committee for Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and as a Global Ocean Forum (GOF) board member.
MacDonald served as a panelist in the conference session “Bridging Science, Policy and Action: Enhancing Cross-Sectoral Collaboration for Inclusive and Equitable Ocean Management and Governance.” MacDonald’s remarks addressed how regional ocean management efforts supported by UCI, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) and Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal could be used as a model for other countries and leveraged to advance cross-sectoral conservation and sustainable use and of marine biodiversity under the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) treaty.
The panel was moderated by María José González-Bernat, Ph.D., co-director of the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA) Ecosystems Program, and Peter Ricketts, Ph.D., former president and vice-chancellor of Acadia University (Canada) and GOF Board member. Other panelists included:
Among the many ocean colleagues at UNOC 2025, MacDonald had the privilege of running into 2015 UCI National Champion of the Champion honoree and ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, Ph.D., and Kate Killerlain Morrison, former MARCO executive director and current managing director of Earle’s conservation organization, Mission Blue.
For more information on UNOC 2025 and its outcomes, click here.
Heather Korzun recently joined the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute (UCI) as a community engagement fellow supported through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coastal Resilience Fellowship Program.
In this role, Korzun will support UCI Associate Director Tom Herrington in coordinating project pipeline work for the Building a Climate Ready NJ initiative, which is funded by NOAA and led by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. In 2024, the UCI was named a partner in the initiative, which aims to harness statewide expertise to advance resilience planning, project design, construction, and education across New Jersey’s 16 coastal counties.
Korzun will work to ensure that multiple education, engagement, and training activities are planned and implemented in conjunction with Building a Climate Ready NJ core activities. She will work closely with Herrington and UCI Community Engagement Specialist Rachel Forbes to gather knowledge from residents, community leaders, and other stakeholders that will help identify resilience projects that are most needed and would be the most impactful. The recommendations will then be entered into the project pipeline for further study and eventual implementation.
Korzun most recently served as a planning fellow at the Land Conservancy of New Jersey, assisting municipalities across the state with developing open space and recreation plans and helping target lands that would be valuable for conservation. The communities she worked with ranged from rural towns with rolling hills of bucolic farmlands to some of the state’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
“What excites me most about this role is the opportunity to deepen my work in community engagement,” she said. “Working on Camden’s Coastal Resilience Plan helped me understand the community dynamics that impact planning efforts. I am grateful for the chance to learn from New Jersey’s coastal communities and help connect them with resources that strengthen their long-term resilience.”
A native of the Virginia Beach area, Korzun recalls first being drawn to environmental policy work as an undergraduate taking a sustainability in business course. She felt a sense of climate anxiety while delving into lessons about the ways climate change was disrupting ordinary people’s lives and felt a calling to act.
“I was really stressed about that for a while, but I realized that the only way to alleviate some of that anxiety was to do work that was directly part of the solutions,” she said.
Korzun graduated from Mary Baldwin University with a bachelor’s degree in sustainable business before completing her master of public administration at the University of Pennsylvania. As a student, she led community engagement projects and educational events about sustainability and has supported research projects on emerging contaminants and climate resilience.
Monmouth University students have begun mining a trove of water quality data collected by the Coastal Lakes Observing Network (CLONet) to make important discoveries about the health of a dozen local lakes and marine life populations within them.
Residents of participating lake communities, Monmouth University scientists and student researchers gathered on campus June 23 for the 2025 Coastal Lakes Summer Summit, where they shared insights and news on their work from the past year. Monmouth students delivered two presentations on what was found through a statistical analysis of CLONet data and environmental DNA (eDNA) materials collected from the waters.
Through CLONet, Monmouth University School of Science and Urban Coast Institute (UCI) staff and students partner with community groups and residents to sample coastal lakes in Monmouth County for temperature, salinity, clarity, dissolved oxygen, and phycocyanin levels – an important indicator of harmful algal blooms – and file their readings to an online database for analysis. Water bodies monitored include: Deal Lake, Fletcher Lake, Jackson Woods Pond, Lake Como, Lake Takanassee, Shadow Lake, Silver Lake, Spring Lake, Sunset Lake, Sylvan Lake, Wesley Lake and Wreck Pond. Since its launch in 2019, volunteer community scientists working with CLONet have collected over 2,200 water samples from Monmouth County lakes.
Dylan DiBella, who graduated with a marine and environmental biology and policy (MEBP) degree in May, compared eDNA extracted from Sunset and Deal lakes over the course of several months with the CLONet water samples to see if any relationships between the water conditions and marine life emerged. Sampling eDNA is a crime scene investigation-style approach to marine detection that has emerged as a more humane and less expensive means of studying fish populations than traditional methods that require their capture. As fish swim through the waters, they leave behind dandruff-like cells and bodily fluids that can be analyzed and matched to the genetic barcodes of others to determine their species.
DiBella displayed a chart estimating the top 10 most abundant fish species that testing determined to be living in the lakes (see carousel above). He said he was surprised to learn how different they were given how geographically close they are to each other, pointing out there were no species shared between either lake’s top three.
His research, which was supported by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, also examined how certain fish species reacted to harmful algal blooms (HABs) and other changes in the waters. For example, he found a negative correlation between white perch eDNA and elevated polymerase chain reaction (PCR) readings, which can be an indicator of a HAB’s onset. This suggests white perch can serve a living warning system to those who manage the lakes.
“Think about the canaries in the coal mine back in the day. Once the canaries start dropping, you know the air quality is not good anymore,” DiBella said. “White perch can function in the same exact way. Once we see it start to respond to harmful algal blooms, we may be able to determine where it’s going to occur and when it’s going to occur, and it can indicate the overall health of the lakes.”
MEBP student Olivia Fowles and statistics students Anthony Stirone, and Brandon Govea, who all earned their degrees in May, sought to discern whether there were any notable long-term or seasonal trends visible in the water data over the years. The team also focused on whether the data showed any changes in water quality in areas where communities had invested in green infrastructure.
In 2020, Wesley Lake underwent a restoration project that included the installation of 12 floating wetland islands that have native plants growing upon them and roots that reach into the water. The islands were designed to remove excess phosphorous and nitrogen that fuel HABs while providing extra habitat within the heavily developed environment. While community members at the meeting said they’ve seen birds and fish taking advantage of the islands, their benefits to water quality had not been measured until now.
According to the team’s analysis, Welsey Lake saw dissolved oxygen (DO) levels improve at a rate greater than any other CLONet lake in the years since the islands were added. Endowed Professor of Marine Science Jason Adolf noted that seeing DO improvements is an important milestone, as low oxygen levels are frequently tied to fish kills, HABs, and poor lake health overall.
“Just like you and me, two minutes without oxygen is going to kill something in the water,” Adolf said.
Among other findings, Sylvan Lake has not yet seen a DO increase since it began a series of living shoreline project in 2019. However, water clarity levels were found to have improved and conductivity increased, indicating it has become saltier.
Slides from these and other presentations delivered at the meeting can be downloaded here.
To learn more about CLONet, including how to volunteer to monitor your community lake, visit the CLONet website or email Community Science Coordinator Erin Conlon at econlon@monmouth.edu. You can also visit the CLONet Data Explorer to view data on lake averages, how individual lakes compare to the full group, and more.
By Barbara Brummer, Ph.D., and Tony MacDonald
As New Jersey’s coastal communities prepare for summer boating and hurricane season, a unique public-private partnership is advancing a smart, sustainable approach to protecting our coast. The New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), in coordination with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, academic institutions and nonprofit partners, has launched the Regional Sediment Management Framework (RSMF), a guide to restoring and safeguarding the state’s valuable wetlands and iconic waterfronts.
The RSMF presents solutions to two simultaneous and pressing challenges—maintaining our navigation channels and helping our coastal marshes survive while facing and losing ground to increasing erosion and rising sea levels. It offers a new model for managing sediment as a resource and prioritizing projects that deliver multiple benefits for people, nature and the economy.
New Jersey’s back bays and coastal waterways must be routinely dredged to support the state’s $50 billion maritime economy, which includes marinas, boat ramps and other infrastructure that many coastal communities and visitors rely on. Traditionally, dredged sediment is treated as waste and transported to upland disposal sites while nearby wetlands and marshes are starved of the sediment needed to thrive and function as natural buffers.
The RSMF’s approach keeps sediment in the estuary system whenever possible, spreading it on marshes to nourish the habitat, give grasses a foothold and enhance community protection from flooding and storms. Since 2013, the NJDOT has used more than 1 million cubic yards of dredged material to restore marshes and beaches. RSMF will expand and accelerate the practice across more sites and projects.
June 1 was the beginning of hurricane season in New Jersey, underscoring the importance of strengthening our natural defenses. Restored marshes reduce wave energy and flood risk, offering cost-effective protection for nearby neighborhoods while providing critical habitat for fish and wildlife.
The RSMF is an important first step in scaling up marsh nourishment efforts, but long-term success requires sustained legislative funding so that the NJDOT can perform dredging that ensures safe navigation and restores our salt marshes. This sensible approach builds resilience to sea level rise and increasingly frequent storms for New Jersey’s coastal communities, supports recreational maritime activities and provides needed habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife.
Kudos to the NJDOT for initiating development of the RSMF, and to the NJDEP and others for fully supporting it. The initiative is a successful model for using nature in New Jersey to meet the challenges of maritime recreation, marshland restoration and community resilience. For the program to flourish, now we need advocacy and action to secure sustained and adequate funding resources.
– Dr. Barbara Brummer is the state director of The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey. Tony MacDonald is the director of the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute.
Rechnitz Family/Urban Coast Institute Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy Peter Jacques has authored a chapter in the newly published book, “A Research Agenda for Sustainable Ocean Governance” (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025).
His chapter, “Original Instructions for the World Ocean: An Indigenist Research Agenda,” advocates for integrating Indigenous knowledge systems into global ocean governance. He argues that current governance models often marginalize Indigenous perspectives, leading to policies that overlook the rights and contributions of Indigenous communities.
Jacques emphasizes the importance of recognizing the “original instructions” — the traditional ecological knowledge and cultural practices of Indigenous peoples — as vital to sustainable ocean management. By incorporating these perspectives, he suggests that ocean governance can become more equitable and effective in addressing environmental challenges.
The chapter begins by critiquing Western approaches to the ocean, such as a 1609 norm of “freedom of the seas” that promotes a “take all you can” attitude that has been destructive to marine life and ecosystems. Jacques then argues for us to learn from an Indigenous perspective that requires we see the ocean as both a living relative and a place where many other non-human persons live. We must treat the ocean with respect, a sense of responsibility, and reciprocity – that is, to give back to it in equal measure the things we take from it.
Edited by Justin Alger and U. Rashid Sumaila, “A Research Agenda for Sustainable Ocean Governance” brings together an international array of expert authors to explore innovative and interdisciplinary pathways forward for ocean governance. The volume examines practices and governance of ocean fisheries, international cooperation, and local practices for sustainable oceans. It also analyzes emergent themes such as the impact of deep-sea tourism and plastic pollution on the oceans, providing a roadmap for shaping ocean governance across the globe to achieve long-term sustainability.
The Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute (UCI) will provide funding for four students and their faculty mentors to conduct summer research projects through its Heidi Lynn Sculthorpe Scholars program. In addition, a UCI Faculty Enrichment Grant has been awarded to Associate Professor Meghan Delaney to advance her research on ecotherapy, which focuses on contact with nature as a method for element of counseling.
Heidi Lynn Sculthorpe Scholars grants support students and faculty of all disciplines in pursuing their passions for marine and coastal issues through experiential research. The program provides grant opportunities for student researchers and faculty mentors to conduct projects of their own design that advance the UCI’s mission and Monmouth’s Strategic Plan. Each year, the program funds several hands-on research positions that provide real-world experience to students while helping make a positive impact in coastal communities.
Student Researcher and Major: Audrey Copeland, political science
Faculty Mentor: Rechnitz Family/UCI Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy Peter Jacques
Analysis will focus on the comparative lack of ocean conservation measures being taken in the Caribbean relative to the critical importance that healthy reefs play in the region’s economy and ecosystems.
Student Researcher and Major: Diederik Boonman Morales, marine and environmental biology and policy
Faculty Mentor: Professor Pedram Daneshgar, Ph.D., Department of Biology/Marine and Environmental Biology and Policy Program
A field guide will be created for beachgoers to learn about common organisms found along New Jersey’s beaches. The guide will include photos to aid with visual identification, short descriptions of each organism’s key characteristics, behavior, and habitat preferences, and more.
Student Researcher and Major: Bryana Ruiz, biology
Faculty Mentor: Rechnitz Family/UCI Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy Peter Jacques
Using the Morris County municipality of Randolph’s experience during Hurricane Sandy as a case study, the researcher will explore how factors such as neighborhood history and social conditions can shape risk and vulnerability to climate hazards.
Student Researcher and Major: Miriam Abecasis, mathematics and software engineering (double major)
Faculty Mentor: Assistant Professor Torrey Gallagher, Ph.D., Department of Mathematics
The project aims to develop mathematical models describing the effects of pollution, contaminants, and runoff on the spread and persistence of invasive species in New Jersey waterways.
Faculty Researcher: Associate Professor Megan Delaney, Ph.D., LPC, Department of Psychology
This research will probe whether practicing ecotherapy and fostering ecowellness can buffer against burnout in mental health professionals, and if so, what the associated factors are.
Monmouth University students and faculty are invited to apply now for additional summer and fall Heidi Lynn Sculthorpe Scholars funding opportunities. Grants available include:
Those interested may apply via the UCI Funding Opportunities page on the MyMU Portal (Monmouth University sign-in credentials required). For more information, contact UCI Associate Director Tom Herrington at therring@monmouth.edu.
These opportunities have been made possible through the generous support of many corporate and private donors. If you would like to make a tax-deductible gift to the UCI, please use our Give a Gift Now form.
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