Manasquan Inlet Shoaling Being Monitored, Army Corps Says

POINT PLEASANT BEACH, NJ — Shoaling along the inside of the Point Pleasant Beach jetty side of Manasquan Inlet is being monitored by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers but does not pose a navigation hazard right now, the Army Corps said Friday.

Boaters have been raising concerns about the shoaling, which has created a sandbar that commercial and party boat captains say has spread rapidly.

Photos posted on the Barnegat Bay Island, NJ Facebook page on Monday showed kids fishing from the sand near the mouth of the inlet on the Point Pleasant Beach side.

"We recently conducted dredging and the surveys from two days ago show the federal channel remains navigable," said Steve Rochette, a spokesman with the Philadelphia District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "We do know that this type of shoaling has occurred historically as the inlet is dynamic. We’ll be continuing to monitor the situation and will continue to coordinate with the U.S. Coast Guard."

Photos of that survey, completed Aug. 9, are at the bottom of this article.

Rochette also urged people to not walk out to the shoaled area.

"It’s important to note the jetties and shoals could be hazardous and should NOT be accessed for any recreation, but we do recognize it can be difficult/impossible to actually enforce that," Rochette said.

There are no immediate plans to dredge the shoal, he said; "some of this is dependent on availability of a dredge."

Rochette said the Army Corps expects to post the updated surveys on its website soon; they will be available at this webpage.

Manasquan Inlet, which is 450 feet across and about 11 feet deep, is one of the entry points for boats that want to sail down the Intracoastal Waterway, a 3,000-mile stretch of natural and some man-made inland waterways that stretch from New England to the Gulf of Mexico.

Nicole Bogan, a member of the Bogan family whose name is synonymous with Manasquan Inlet fishing, was urging people to contact U.S. Rep. Chris Smith to try to speed up action.

"It’s happening fast and it's getting bad fast," she wrote on a public Facebook post about the shoaling. She said the family's captains, including Howard Bogan Jr. of the 125-foot Jamaica, say they have "never seen anything like it in the Manasquan Inlet before."