SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

As we all know by now, the Army Corps of Engineers has been hard at work replenishing sand at Plumb Beach and installing long-term fixes to prevent against future erosion.

At ground level, the one thing you notice is that, hey, there’s actually a beach again in that area near the parking lot closest to the Belt Parkway. That section was the most heavily eroded, with just a few feet of sand bags between the water and the highway. Now there’s a nice stretch of sand. Other than that, though, it’s hard to see the extent of the work.

Until now. A local photographer who asked not to be named sent in this fantastic aerial photo of Plumb Beach after the Army Corps of Engineers completed phase one of the project, in which they pumped in fresh sand from the Ambrose Channel. That’s Gerritsen Beach in the forground.

In phase two of the project, Army Corps contractors have closed off the parking lot and bike path as they bring in equipment. They’ll be constructing two rock jetties at either end of the eroded section. One will go near where the sand roughly drops away in the photo above, and the other will be just at the right edge of the image. They’ll also add a groin in the middle – a man-made sandbar of sorts that will help diminish the power of the waves before they strike the sand.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Beachgoers beware: beginning this weekend, Manhattan Beach’s parking restrictions take effect, limiting where you can park if you plan a Saturday or Sunday trip to the neighborhood.

NYC Parking Regulations in Manhattan Beach prohibit parking your cars on the streets on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays through September 15.

Who left their ugly RV on the beach?

We’ve received a lot of e-mails these last few days about what’s going on at Brigham Street, south of Emmons Avenue. The stretch of street that abuts the waterway was been closed off by police, and cranes, barges and construction equipment have taken up the space since Monday.

No, it ain’t the beginning of Brigham Street Park. You’ll have to wait a few more years for that one.

The answer lies in a post we did a few days ago where we updated about the new Brighton Beach and Coney Island bathrooms. In it, we also included the schedule of street closures that goes along with it. Among the closures:

Brigham Street South of Emmons Avenue from midnight Monday, May 6, to 6 a.m. Friday, May 10.

That’s because the new stations arrive in one piece. That’s right – huge, truck-sized structures – barreling through New York City’s streets. That, understandably, didn’t seem like such a good idea to local planners. So, instead, the structures arrive by barge, are lifted off it by a crane, placed onto a truck, taken to their location, lifted off the truck by a crane, and installed on the concrete piles already installed – much to the chagrin of local residents.

Brigham Street appears to be the area planners identified as the best, most accomodating option to make that first move from barge to truck. So that’s what all the commotion is about.

Oh, and the bathrooms have arrived. The one at the top of this post was placed on Brighton Beach this morning, and photographed by reader Ira Rubinsky. Nope, that’s not an abandoned RV on the beach…

Here’s the view of the crane at Brigham, as seen from the Breakers:

Photo by Albert

Source: National Parks Service

Hundreds of horseshoe crabs invaded the subtle slopes of Plumb Beach’s shoreline in their own sex-fueled, prehistoric rendition of the Allied invasion of Normandy last week, as horseshoe crab mating season kicked off on Thursday, April 25.

The National Parks Service snapped the photo above of some of the crabs getting down and dirty. The animals have been taking to soft-sloped beaches of the mid-Atlantic during the spring’s new and full moons for 400 million years, one of the few living species known to predate the earliest dinosaurs. Female crabs come ashore and deposit up to 20,000 eggs each, followed by a handful of males clinging to their tails and fertilizing the eggs in their wake.

The crabs come up in late April, May, and throughout June – just before high tide or long after sunset – during full and new moons. You can see them around the following dates:

• Thursday, April 25, 2013 (Full Moon)
• Friday, May 10 (New Moon)
• Saturday, May 25 (Full Moon)
• Saturday, June 8 (New Moon)
• Sunday, June 23 (Full Moon)
• Saturday. July 6 (New Moon)
• Monday, July 22 (Full Moon)
• Wednesday, August 7 (New Moon)
• Wednesday, August 21 (Full Moon)

Also, check out this video Sheepshead Bites made back in 2010, when the American Littoral Society’s Don Riepe showed us around the beach and the horseshoe crab’s mating practices. Yes, it has bifurcated penises.

As Memorial Day nears, the Parks Department is working to get Manhattan Beach Park back in shape for the summertime. Replacement picnic benches and tables for the ones destroyed by Superstorm Sandy were delivered months ago and are now in storage.

However, one of the partially destroyed fences, which separates the beach and picnic area, has also been removed. My question is why do need it and should it be replaced?

Its purpose was to keep visitors from entering the grassy area. Some people do not like the sand and would prefer to sprawl out on the grass, but this is not allowed. Many other city parks allow visitors onto the grass. You are even allowed to walk on the grass in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and lay down a blanket.

I would like to know what makes Manhattan Beach Park so different that the grass is so holy that it cannot be stepped upon? Why should you only be able to view the grassy areas and not be able to use them?

It seems to me that the money to replace the fences that have already been removed could be put to better use. We already have a large grassy area right in front of the park on Oriental Boulevard that is fenced off. Why should the smaller area near the sand also be fenced off? How much more maintenance would be required to keep it open? Wouldn’t the enjoyment that opening this area would bring far outweigh the additional maintenance, which would just involve some occasional cleanup?

Should we not  be able to enjoy our parks? Do you think the small, previously fenced off grassy area near the sand by Ocean Avenue should remain closed?

Commuters might bemoan this week’s chilly weather, but students of Kingsborough Community College’s culinary arts program took it as an opportunity to hit the beach and chisel some ice.

We went down to the school (2001 Oriental Boulevard) yesterday to pick up some papers at Community Board 15′s office – which, by the way, is temporarily without phone or internet service – and had the good luck of running into Chef Thomas Smyth, one of the head professors with their culinary arts program.

Smyth told us the 16 students of his cold-kitchen class spent four hours on the beach, chiseling away at the giant blocks of ice. Smyth himself wielded the chainsaw to bring the blocks down to size, and the blocks were sculpted into a penguin, a whale and two items that the students jokingly described as ashtrays.

“They get a survey of everything they could do in a cold kitchen,” including creating these decorations, Smyth said.

It’s the first time Smyth and the culinary arts program have been able to do ice sculptures at the school, since the ice supply has been an ongoing problem.

“Actually, this is the first year we managed to get the bloody ice,” Smyth said. “Just to get somebody to deliver a couple of blocks of ice to Kingsborough was a big deal, but now we’ve got that figured out.”

Next year, we demand the class make an ice sculpture of a Sheepshead fish. You hear me, Smyth?

View photos of all the sculptures and the class.

Reader Illona B. sent us this photo today, letting us know that Parks Department crews are out in force on Riegelmann Boardwalk, the 2.5-mile waterfront icon spanning Brighton Beach and Coney Island that took a battering during the storm.

Several feet of sand blew up and over the boardwalk during Superstorm Sandy, and authorities have started the cleanup work to put it back where it belongs: the beach itself.

Here’s what Illona wrote:

Getting the sand over to the other side of the rail – bdwlk almost free of sand!  I’m actually impressed that parks dept. Was so quick to clean beach/bdwlk – now if only the kids couuld get some playgrounds re-opened!

Hurricane? Good Day For A Swim In Brighton Beach!

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg quipped during his press conference this morning that he had heard some surfers took to the waves, I figured it was some urban myth floating around.

Then I found this photo in my inbox from Arthur R., taken on Brighton Beach near Brighton 15th Street.

All I’ve got to say is: Dude, seriously?

Trucks move freshly pumped sand around Plumb Beach (Source: New York District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers/Flickr)

Almost immediately after it became clear that Hurricane Sandy, and its alter-ego the Frankenstorm, could come ashore in Long Island or New York City, we reached out to the Army Corps of Engineers to see how work is coming along at Plumb Beach, and if it will withstand the hit.

Army Corps contractors are in the middle of the first stage of sand replenishment at Plumb Beach, where they’re pumping 127,000 cubic yards of sand to restore the heavily eroded beach. With the hurricane slated to hit us before work is completed, we feared that loose sand could be washed away, taking the project a few steps back – and that the Belt Parkway is still at risk.

Not so, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. They say work is coming along nicely, and the most vulnerable areas have already been reshored, protecting the Belt Parkway.

“We’ve actually finished more than half of the sand placement, and are in the process of deploying the temporary geotube groin,” said project manager Dan Falt. “We’re done in the section of the beach that received the most erosion. We will be prepared for the storm, and the sand should do it’s job and protect the Belt Parkway.”

Now let’s just pray the rest of us are just as prepared.

As we reported last week, the Army Corp of Engineers began the process of restoring Plumb Beach by pumping more than 127,000 cubic yards of sand into the eroded stretch.

The video above shows you exactly what you’d expect sand pumping to look like, with a motorized plume of sand exploding onto the coastline in a near continuous stream. The sand itself is coming from Ambrose Channel, one of the city’s navigational waterways that serves commercial vessels coming and going from New York Harbor.

The process of pumping sand onto the beach is part of effort’s first phase, which should be completed in November.

The restoration of Plumb Beach, which was nearly destroyed by Hurricane Ida in 2009, is expected to be completed in 2013 at a cost of $6.5 million dollars.

The parking lot is temporarily closed to visitors.