Mayor Urges Politeness As Brick Beach Crowd Limits Spark Anger

BRICK, NJ — As summer stretches on with sunny days that draw people to the beach, Brick Township Mayor John G. Ducey has a message for beachgoers: Please be polite to the beach staff.

Ducey said staff at the township's ocean beaches has been faced with angry people who have arrived at the beaches only to find them closed because of capacity limits imposed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Towns up and down the Shore have imposed limits on the number of people allowed on the beaches daily to help enforce social distancing to avoid the spread of the virus. More than 176,000 New Jersey residents have tested positive for the virus since March 4, and 13,691 have died from complications of the virus, according to the state Department of Health.

Those limits have led to conflicts between beachgoers who arrive to find the beaches closed, and have created long lines in other areas; on July 3, the line of vehicles waiting to get into Island Beach State Park was well over a mile long before the park opened at 8 a.m.

What frequently happens is that while the beaches fill early (something that has long been the case at Island Beach State Park), often they will reopen a few hours later, as the crowds wane.

Ducey also had a piece of advice for those planning a beach day, who want to be assured of being able to get on the beach: Check the tide tables.

At high tide, the available space on the beach is much more limited, and that forces beach personnel to shut down beach access much sooner. Low tide creates more space on the beach.

So beachgoers who head to the beach after high tide has passed will find more space available. It's roughly six hours from high tide to low tide, and 12 hours between high tides. So if high tide is at about 6 a.m. (as it was Thursday) you can expect the space available on the beach will increase until between 11:30 a.m. and noon (low tide was about 11:40 a.m. Thursday) and then slowly lessen as the tide shifts back toward high tide.

A few websites that offer tide charts are TideCharts.com, Surf-Forecast.com, and Tides4Fishing.com.

The township police department also issues Nixle alerts when the beaches are at capacity. You can sign up to have the Nixle alerts sent to your phone.

"Donovan Brown (the head of the township's lifeguard staff) has to make the call" to stop allowing patrons when the beach is at socially distanced capacity, Ducey said. "That obviously creates ire when the beach is closed."

"Please be kind," Ducey said.

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