At least 11 swimmers have drowned at the Jersey Shore this summer, and some experts are blaming rougher surf and even beach-replenishment projects for the troubled waters.
“I walk the beaches all year long and I’ve noticed the beaches are shallower much further out because of the replenishment,” says Asbury Park beach safety supervisor Joe Bongiovanni, a lifeguard for 50 years. “The replenishment is doing what it’s intended to do. However, it does create more rip currents — and people don’t recognize rip currents.”
Rip currents are usually blamed for one to three deaths a year in New Jersey, according to the National Weather Service. There have been five in the past two months.
“The only year with more rip-current deaths is 2008, when there were six deaths” the entire year, said meteorologist Sarah Johnson.
The tragic trend began on June 15, before lifeguards were on duty, when rough surf claimed the lives of four teenagers on Jersey beaches.
Two cousins, Mitzi Hernandez, 13, and Emily Gonzalez Perez, 12, went for an evening dip at Belmar Beach when they went under. They were pulled ashore by frantic bystanders, but Hernandez perished the next day and Gonzalez Perez four days later.
The same day, in Atlantic City, Ramon Quinn, 15, attempted to rescue 16-year-old Kaliyah Hand from a rip current. Both were pulled under. Their bodies were not recovered for several days.
In July, three drownings were reported, and three more have already been recorded in August, including a 74-year-old man in Sea Isle City who was bowled over by strong waves.
“This is the worst summer I’ve ever seen,’’ said Amy Delmanto, 42, of Old Bridge, NJ, who witnessed 12-year-old Bianca Palma drown on a Sandy Hook beach on July 16.
Delmanto and her 12-year-old daughter Sydney were looking for shells at about 5:50 p.m. when she heard “the loudest, terrifying scream.”
The lifeguards, who were packing their gear, raced to help, but it was too late.
Delmanto, who has a season pass to Sandy Hook and has summered on the Shore her entire life said she “witnessed three rescues” by lifeguards from the same stand in a matter of hours prior to the drowning. Delmanto said Palma was only in water up to her knees when she was pulled out by a rip current.
New Jersey and the federal government have pumped hundreds of millions into beach replenishment and protection projects since Super Storm Sandy wreaked havoc in 2012.
But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the projects, told The Post that “beachfill projects neither create nor worsen rip currents. The Corps has not noticed a difference in intensity or number of rip currents.”
Yet experts have noticed rougher surf this season.
“The waves have been bigger and present more often than usual,” said Dr. Stewart Farrell, director of Stockton University’s Coastal Research Center. “Any increase in swimmer hazard is from continuous 3 to 4 foot waves.” Farrell said the wild waves were caused by “more wind energy in the North Atlantic than it has been in the past.”
But he rejected the notion that beach replenishment was to blame for larger waves or rip currents.
More dangerous than the changing slope and width of beaches, experts said, are people who fail to heed warnings and recklessly enter the ocean when lifeguards are off duty.
Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty said his lifeguards have made “170 saves” since Memorial Day.
“The mistake people make is the Atlantic Ocean is not a pool,” he said. “It can turn deadly very quickly if people aren’t careful.”