Sea Isle Boulevard serves as the main entryway into town.
By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Legions of diamondback terrapins emerge from the marshlands each summer in search of dry sand or soil in which to lay their eggs. The slow-moving turtles often cross over local roads – frequently with deadly consequences.
Engineers, though, devised a novel way last year to protect the diamondbacks from summer traffic on one of the shore’s busiest roads, Sea Isle Boulevard. An intricate barrier of chain-link fencing was installed under the guardrails to prevent the turtles from venturing out on the road and getting run over.
Although the turtle fencing was deemed a success in 2019 – very few diamondbacks were killed last summer – the barrier has had an unintended consequence: It now serves as a litter trap.
But Sea Isle Mayor Leonard Desiderio said Cape May County has a plan to clean up the trash on the county-run boulevard. Inmates from the county jail will pick up the litter once or twice a month to keep the main entryway into Sea Isle nice-looking, he said.
“One morning I’m leaving town and I see a mattress out there,” Desiderio recalled of the worst type of litter or debris he ever noticed on the boulevard.
After he complained about the litter, the county agreed to have the inmates clean it up. In addition to serving as Sea Isle’s mayor, Desiderio is also a Cape May County freeholder, an elected position that oversees county government.
Responding to honking horns, Mayor Leonard Desiderio waves to motorists traveling on the rebuilt Sea Isle Boulevard when the project was completed in January 2019.
The turtle fencing on Sea Isle Boulevard was required by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection as part of the regulatory permits issued for the road’s $12.7 million reconstruction project. Both sides of the boulevard have been raised by 4.5 feet to protect it from flooding during coastal storms. The multiyear project was completed in 2019.
Approximately 19,400 linear feet of “Turtle Exclusion Fencing” was installed at a cost of $194,170, County Engineer Robert Church said in an earlier interview.
“One of the many conditions that the NJDEP required to allow the (Sea Isle Boulevard reconstruction) project to move forward was to provide Turtle Exclusion Fencing along the roadway,” he said.
Church explained that the fencing will make the boulevard safer for both the turtles and the humans who travel the road.
“This lowers turtle mortality rates and lessens the likelihood of vehicular accidents resulting from swerving to avoid turtles or running over the turtles,” he said.
Nesting season for the diamondback terrapins begins at the end of May and lasts until about the third week in July – the same time that throngs of summer vacationers arrive in their cars at the Jersey Shore.
Sea Isle Boulevard serves as the main entryway into town.
The hope is that the number of diamondback fatalities will be extremely low now that turtle fencing extends on both sides along the entire length of the nearly two-mile boulevard, which connects Sea Isle with Exit 17 of the Garden State Parkway.
Steve Ahern, who, along with his wife, Susan, runs the Sea Isle Terrapin Rescue organization, said only a small number of diamondbacks were killed last summer after the fencing was installed. Previously, about 75 diamondbacks were killed each year by traffic, Ahern noted.
The fencing replaced plastic tubing that had extended along both sides of the road as a turtle barrier. However, the tubing had gaps in it that allowed the turtles to crawl onto the roadway.
The chain-link turtle fencing underneath the guardrails has created what is virtually an impenetrable barricade for the diamondbacks.
However, it also serves as an unintended litter trap, marring the appearance of the road. Sea Isle spokeswoman Katherine Custer said the county inmates are scheduled to clean up the trash in late January.
“It might be unsightly, but it can be cleaned up more easily,” Custer said of the litter being snared in the fencing.
Besides helping to save the lives of diamondback terrapins, another eco-friendly benefit of the turtle fencing is that it also prevents trash from being blown into the environmentally sensitive bay that surrounds Sea Isle Boulevard, Custer pointed out.
“Anytime you can keep anything out of the bay, that’s good,” she said.
