Beachcombers get ready to start the tour.
By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Anne Mosenson, a nature guide with Sea Isle City’s beachcombing tours, asked Corbin Post and Sam Arbelaez to take a look at the ocean and guess the color of the water.
Sam quickly blurted out blue, while Corbin thought about it for a moment before saying brown.
At that point, Mosenson held up a plastic bottle containing clear, colorless water taken from the ocean only yards away from where she was standing on the beach at 29th Street.
“So now you can impress all of your friends at your next cocktail party and tell them what color the ocean really is,” Mosenson said, smiling.
Well, it might be some time before 7-year-old Corbin and his 8-year-old cousin Sam hit the cocktail circuit. But that doesn’t mean they can’t start learning about the ocean, beaches and marine life right away.
For more than 30 years, the Sea Isle City Environmental Commission has been teaching children about the Jersey Shore’s diverse ecosystem by hosting family-friendly beachcombing tours that combine fun with education.
The twice-weekly tours resumed Tuesday for the summer, but this year the coronavirus pandemic has prompted a series of changes to comply with social distancing requirements designed to protect the beachcombers and the guides.
Tour guide Anne Mosenson, right, shows some seashells to the beachcombers while maintaining social distance behind a line drawn in the sand.
Mosenson, for example, literally drew a line in the sand to create a safe distance between her and Corbin and Sam. Janelle Post, Corbin’s mother, and David Post, Corbin’s grandfather, were also part of the group that joined Mosenson for her kid-friendly presentation about the environment.
Mosenson spread a blanket on the sand to display an assortment of seashells, crabs, a starfish and other marine life that were used to illustrate her remarks about the ocean and other facets of the shore.
In the past, children were encouraged to hold the shells, but they are not allowed to touch anything this year to prevent the possible spread of the coronavirus.
“I think it’s just going to be an adjustment this year,” Mosenson of the virus-related restrictions.
The pandemic delayed the beachcombing tours from starting this year. There was some worry that they would have to be scaled back or not even held at all in this, their 32nd year.
Abby Powell, the beachcombing director, said the city’s Environmental Commission was adamant about staging the tours this summer to give children something fun and educational to do after they had to endure myriad coronavirus-related cancellations.
“Everything else was canceled. This was the one, safe thing we could do for the kids,” Powell explained.
Beachcombers get ready to start the tour.
After listening to Mosenson’s talk, Post took Corbin and his cousin Sam close to the water’s edge for some shell hunting. The two boys seemed to thoroughly enjoy the experience.
“I liked it,” Sam said. “I liked learning about the sea animals and the turtles. I liked learning about all of the wildlife and the beach.”
Children taking the tours are given some environmentally themed goodies, including shell-collecting plastic buckets. They also receive a beachcomber bracelet, a coloring book decorated with marine life and a certificate proclaiming them as stewards of the environment.
In previous years, the children were given their buckets before the tours began and their bracelets and coloring books afterward. This summer, everything will be handed out before the tours start to limit exposure between the guides and beachcombers, Powell said.
If you go: Weather permitting, the hour-long tours are held 10 a.m. Tuesday at the 29th Street beach and 10 a.m. Thursday at the Townsends Inlet Waterfront Park on 94th Street. They will continue through Sept. 1. There is no charge, but donations are accepted.
Wearing a mask, Molly Dougherty, 10, a volunteer with the beachcombing tours, stands in front of a social distancing sign on the Promenade at the entrance to the 29th Street beach.
