NEWS

Inlet shoaling problem continues to cause headache in OC

Doug Ferrar
dferrar@delmarvanow.com
A view of the Ocean City Commercial Fishing Harbor.

Problems with sand plugging up the Ocean City Inlet have persisted for decades.

Sand build-up from erosion – a process known as "shoaling" – causes the navigable channels of the inlet and the back bays to become too shallow and narrow for commercial fishing vessels to use safely. Shoaling was once controllable with regular maintenance, but now the build-up happens faster.

"There's billions of dollars (of state revenue) here," said fisherman Mike Coppa, owner and operator of a West Ocean City trawling operation. "This is a huge problem. It's the biggest problem we have."

Local commercial fishermen were the guests at an open forum hosted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources at the Ocean City Marlin Club on Monday, March 27. The semi-annual gathering is held to discuss fisheries issues affecting local operations.

Among the topics tossed around the room were several new draft regulations that may affect the take of specific species, the squeeze felt by local fishermen as restrictions are enacted to prevent overfishing in New England, pressures to maintain product quotas to retain valuable fishing permits and methods to attract new fishermen to the local commercial fishing district.

But the hot button issue was shoaling.

READ MORE: West OC harbor gets some dredging

Several fishermen commented on difficulties, not just in the inlet but in the commercial harbor, too. A problem is "hard grounding" – when the hull of a fully-laden fishing boat strikes bottom when entering port.

Another economic impact is the loss of the local scalloping fleet. A huge scallop bed rests offshore, but the captains who harvested scallops decided the harbor problems weren't worth the aggravation and moved to other home ports on the Atlantic coast.

Commercial fishermen from the Ocean City area and other economic stakeholders met with representatives of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Estuarine and Marine Fisheries Division at the Ocean City Marlin Club on March 27.

Mike Luisi, deputy director of DNR's Estuarine and Marine Fisheries Division and chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, was surprised by the passion with which the fishermen expressed their frustrations, but not by the problem.

"Fishermen contact us about it, so we're involved but we can't really solve the problem ourselves," Luisi said. "It's becoming worse and worse. It seems we can't get through a year without it requiring attention."

Estuarine and Marine Fisheries acts as an advocate for the fishermen with other fishery regulatory agencies and with the state and federal government. But shoaling is something that can only be attacked by large-scale dredging operations, and that means the Army Corps of Engineers.

READ MORE: OC harbor dredging may see additional study

"When a fisherman comes in with his catch and can't get to dock, they can't wait until someone solves the problem," Luisi said. "They need to get to dock today."

Under the complex mid-Atlantic fisheries quota system, some area species can only be taken to port in Maryland, Luisi said. Other species not so restricted can be ported anywhere, but taking a detour to Indian River or Chincoteague adds time and expense.

Many opinions, no clear path

Coppa blamed the Assateague jetty, built to stabilize the shoreline, for altering the hydrodynamics of the region and causing the recent increase in the rate of shoaling. The fishermen present – including Merrill Campbell, George Topping and Sonny Gwin – had similar opinions.

But others disagree.

"That's one of the things that the Corps of Engineers wants to study," said Terry McGean, city engineer for the Town of Ocean City. "You have some very strong opinions on the impact of (the jetty), but no real scientific study work to back up those opinions."

Shoaling is a byproduct of the inlet itself, McGean said. Before the Inlet was cut through in 1933, Ocean City and Assateague were contiguous. A natural process known as "littoral drift" caused sand eroded from Ocean City to be deposited on Assateague in a north-to-south movement.

The dredge Currituck is seen dredging Rudee Inlet in this November 2012 handout image..

The creation of the inlet changed that. Now, the south-moving sand meets north-moving sand, a reverse littoral drift eroded from lower Assateague. The sand isn't being deposited on the shore, it circles at the "nodal point" where it becomes affected by the tides moving through the inlet mouth.

"You wind up with a real erosion problem," McGean said.

READ MORE: Ocean City Inlet dredging to target shoaling

Shoaling occurs when the incoming tide sucks the sand into the inlet, creating a "flood shoal" that reduces navigability, McGean said. The outgoing tide creates a companion shoal or "ebb shoal" that extends the clotting of the inlet.

For years, the Corps was contracted to do semi-annual maintenance dredging as part of the Assateague Bypass Work project. Dredges moved 40,000 cubic yards of sandfrom offshore and the inlet to replenish the Assateague beach, said Chris Gardner, public affairs officer for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Only 5,000 to 10,000 cubic yards of sand came from the inlet. It wasn't intended to restore the channel to its original depth.

"That arrangement worked really well for a number of years. Then a couple of things happened, all around the same time," McGean said.

First, the Corps extended the Assateague jetty through a process known as "sand tightening," to prevent it being compromised by erosion.

Then Hurricane Sandy hit. The storm reconfigured the north end of the island, creating a cut-through or "second inlet," McGean said. The sand liberated from the island was deposited in the inlet channel.

"That second inlet may have been there awhile, but regardless it made (the problem) worse," McGean said.

What's next?

The real problem is that no one really knows why the rate of shoaling has increased since Sandy. Funding a study to look at the issue is part of the problem, McGean said. A recent study by the Corps was cost-shared with the National Park Service, which subsequently was hit with budget cuts, undermining the study.

READ MORE: At Ocean City Inlet, dredging goes deep

"The Corps of Engineers is working to get funding to do the study and look at the hard data," McGean said.

A Federal Interest Determination made in 2015 paved the way for a series of smaller scale Continuing Authorities Program studies, Gardner said. These are usually small surveys with low price tags and short time spans. The Corps originally wanted to study the new hydrodynamics of the entire area, including the Inlet, the shoaling problem, beach erosion and a 50-foot scour hole developing off Stinky Beach, on the mainland shore of Isle of Wight Bay. It covered too much territory, Gardner said.

The revised focus will determine the cause and potential impact of the scour hole, and might start as early as this summer, Gardner said. The hydrodynamics data may ultimately give a bigger picture of what's going on at the inlet.

"What's going on there has to be tied to everything else in the area," Gardner said.

Pat Schrawder, district representative for Md. Del. Mary Beth Carozza, was part of a discussion of the shoaling problem around the Ocean City Inlet at a Md. Dept. of Natural Resources forum on March 27.

State Delegate Mary Beth Carozza R-38C-Worcester championed dredging the inlet and harbor to 14 feet with a maximum depth of 16 feet in Spring 2015. These figures were repeated at the March 27 forum.

Urgency was stressed by the fishermen. Pat Schrawder, Carozza's district representative, suggested that Rep. Andy Harris might have access to funding for harbor dredging, but that the sand, tainted by motor oil and other pollution, would be hard to dispose of. Campbell asked if the governor could be involved, due to the commercial harbor's importance as the state's only ocean port.

The current price tag for semi-annual maintenance dredging is about $600,000 a year, Gardner said. It may not be solving the problem, but dredging the channels to "authorized depth plus two-foot over depth" would be only a temporary solution — until the new hydrodynamics are understood, the channel will rapidly fill in again.

READ MORE: Dredging to begin in Ocean City inlet

The price tag on the full channel dredge is upward of $2 million. If the dredged material can't be dumped locally, the cost could skyrocket, Gardner said. Shoaling could undo the work in a couple of years.

It's a catch-22 situation, McGean said: If larger fishing boats were using the harbor, the funds would be instantly available to solve this problem. But you can't attract those boats while the problem persists.

"I think you're always going to have a shoaling problem, that's the nature of the beast of an inlet," McGean said.

But he emphasized that twice-yearly maintenance dredging – or preferably quarterly dredging – would be an ongoing requirement regardless. Before dredging the channel and harbor, the altered hydrodynamics must be understood first.

"If you don't study these things and you just take a leap of faith, you don't know what sort of unintended consequences that could have," McGean said. "You could stop the shoaling there and move it someplace else."