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Assawoman living shoreline completed, more planned in the fall

Delaware Center for the Inland Bays

There’s another living shoreline along the First State’s coast.

Living shorelines are coastal areas made of natural materials meant to reduce erosion and create habitat.  They are also considered one approach to help cope with anticipated sea level rise.

The newly completed living shoreline at Sassafras Landing in the Assawoman Wildlife Area was built to strengthen a thin piece of beach separating a freshwater pond and a saltwater tributary.

The Delaware Center for the Inland Bays partnered with DNREC Division of Fish and Wildlife to fill the area with sand and plant salt marsh grasses creating 13,000 square feet of salt marsh habitat. Offshore Wave Attenuation Devices (WAD) were set up to absorb incomming waves.

“Wetlands and salt marshes like this are protecting our shoreline from erosion from rising sea levels, and it also provides really important habitat,” said Amy Barra, a spokeswoman for the center. “We’ve already seen just since the shoreline has gone in that there are fish, crabs and we’ve even seen terrapins nesting.”

The living shoreline will serve as one of the Center for the Inland Bays living shoreline demonstration sites meant to educate the public.

Barra says an ongoing fish seining survey will document changes in fish populations in the area resulting from the added shoreline.

“We get to see if we’re seeing more fish in this area with the new habitat—if we’re seeing different types of fish, if we’re seeing populations that are very different here versus other places we’re surveying in the bays. So it’ll be very interesting,” she said.

The Assawoman site joins a list of living shorelines on Delaware’s coast. Barra says the next one is planned for the new Botanical Gardens at Pepper Creek set to open in September.

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