Hundreds of Tar balls Assualt Windward Beach In Brick NJ

I originally wrote about finding an unusually large amount of oil in the water behind my home and in the surrounding waters in Barnegat Bay, NJ back on May 22nd.

Since then I have continued to see oil in the water and have on occasion video taped it and taken pictures.

One example is this video taken July 7th 2010 which shows my lagoon filled with droplets of water and the oil floating to the surface from underneath the water.

The video above was taken at my house which I located on point A on the map below.

Yesterday I went to Summerfest at Windward Beach in Brick NJ.

Here is a map from my house (A) to Windward Beach (B).

Here is a view of Windward Beach in Google Earth.

Windward Beach, Brick NJ In Google Earth. Location Of the Brick NJ Tar Balls.

When I arrived at Windward Beach Park I went down to the shore I found I saw that the sand looked black, like it was being stained by oil.

I dug into the sand and found a layer of black sand that also appeared to be stained with oil a few inches beneath the surface.

I looked along the edge of the surf and saw what at first appeared to be blackened seaweed and pieces of wood.

I then though about all of the oil I have been seeing in the water over the last 2 months in NJ and decided to just make sure it wasn’t actually tar balls.

To my amazement that is exactly what was on the beach.

I went back to my wife and told her and she gave me a plastic bag to go collect some.

I brought them back and she recorded this video.

My wife and I then went back down the the beach and I recorded the light layer of oil washing on the beach and picked some new tar balls out of the surf.

I then discussed informing the police with my wife.

I thought about the story of tar balls in NJ hitting the paper and how devastating the consequence would be on tourism and local beaches.

Then I thought about how every day for two months I see oil in the water in my back yard and can’t stop myself from thinking its from the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

Then I thought about my son swimming in that water and ending up with cancer or some other kind of long term chronic health problems.

Finally I thought whether it is devastating to tourism or not millions of people should not be bringing there kids to the beach and swimming in this toxic mess.

I couldn’t live with myself knowing about this and not saying anything about it.

Finally I mustered up the courage to approach the police.

“Excuse me, do you have a minute?”, I muttered to the two officers on patrol. “You are probably going to think I am crazy but it looks like there are tarballs washing up down on the beach.”

I explained how at first it appears to be seaweed or wood but if you get down and look it is actually pieces of asphalt or tar crumbled up into balls.

The first officer responded “Who the hell knows what’s in that water down there. Maybe own of the marinas nearby is dumping crap into the water” and the other officer assured me they would go down and check.

I left the Windward Beach Park to go get some tea for my wife and coffee for myself.

I came back and gave my wife her coffee and open the bag of tar balls I found before.

I was going to show them to the police to make sure they knew I wasn’t crazy and took about half out of the tar balls out of the bag to keep some for myself in case the police wanted them to send them out for testing.

I went back to the two police officers I spoke to before and asked them If they saw what I was talking about.

“Yeah…. Well kind of…” responded the police officer.

“Well here let me show you”, I said as I pulled a tar ball out of the baggie in my hand.

I then showed it to the police and bent it back in forth and then cracked in half to demonstrate that it wasn’t a rock.

I proceeded to rub it along my fingers which left a greasy oily stain and the told the officers it is definitely a tar ball.

“Well does it smell like oil?” asked the officer. I put it up to my nose and smelled it.

“Yep. It smells like oil”, I told them. I then put in front of both of their noses and they both smelled it and concurred that I smelled like oil.

The officers then said we will let “recreation” know about it.

On my way home I thought to myself, “Let recreation know Why? Shouldn’t they be calling the DEP or the Coast Guard and finding out where it is coming from?”

Today I watched the video and uploaded them to YouTube.

When I viewed the video I realized that my wife had taken there was no video of the shore line and you really couldn’t make a conclusive determination that you where looking at tar balls or that they where even collected off the beach.

SO I went back to the beach today to get some video.

I noticed that “recreation” had done little more than rake up the tar balls I told myself as I walked up to the beach and looked at the fresh rake marks in the sand.

But it did little good because even more tar balls where washing ashore.

There where literally hundreds of tar balls on the beach so I took out my camera and started video taping as I collected more tar balls from the beach.

After I was done video taping I decided to start taking photos.

I collected more and more tar balls from the shore of Windward Beach until it started to get dark.

Then I thought to myself. “OK, they know these tar balls are washing up on the beach. They are all over the place. They are just cleaning them up and pretending like nothing is going. They are keeping quiet and not notifying the public.”

“I wonder what I will find along the beach where they are not cleaning up?”

I walked down to the beach to a secluded are of the shore line behind some woods.

I looked over and saw what looked like a tree stump sticking up out of the surf.

As I walked over to it I was amazed as I realized it wasn’t a tree stump.

What I had found was a monster tarball the size of my head.


I went home and laid the tar balls out on the table.

The large tarball was about 13 inches long, 6 inches wide and 4 inches high.

Video of tar balls collected from Windward Beach in Brick NJ.

Related Posts:

• Confirmed BP Gulf Oil Spill Tar Balls Hit Two Locations Along The Texas Coast
• BP Gulf Oil Spill Is Already In Gulf Stream And May Hit North Carolina Beaches Any Day
• This Is What We Need – A BP Gulf Oil Spill Containment Cap That Doesn’t Allow Oil To Leak.
• Against Federal Advice Pensacola Beach Opens; Over 400 people sick
• BP Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup A PR Stunt That Leaves Layers Of Oil Caked On Gulf Beaches

Hundreds of Tar balls Assualt Windward Beach In Brick NJ ©, . This copying or redistribution of this material requires that this license must remain intact

Read the original story at Alexander Higgins Blog