Alliance for a Living Ocean

2007 Long Beach Boulevard
North Beach Haven, New Jersey 08008
Mail: PO Box 95, Ship Bottom, NJ 08008
(609) 492-0222
E-Mail ALO

Barrier Island Ocean Watch Network ---- BIOWNET
by Fred Bach
BIOWNET Administrator

The Alliance for a Living Ocean (ALO) decided that, since one of ALO's main goals is the dissemination of environmental information, it might be helpful to the people on LBI and other U.S. barrier island communities to be within easy reach of one another. What better way to do this than by a computer network? We decided to make it an ALO project and call it the Barrier Island Ocean Watch Network ---- BIOWNET.

The next step was determining the location of all U.S. barrier island communities. Surprisingly enough, this was not an easy task. After many months of correspondence with ocean conservation groups, coastal management organizations and environmentalists, it became clear that the U.S. barrier island communities under consideration are only located on the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico --- from New York to Texas. To the best of our knowledge, there are no barrier island communities on the Pacific Coast.

We consider barrier islands to be narrow elongated landforms consisting of unconsolidated sand. They are characterized by a dynamic beach system made up of offshore bars, surfs, sandy beaches having one or more dunes behind them, interior lowlands, and bayside wetlands. They are usually located not more than 6 miles offshore in a position to offer mainland protection. We consider a barrier island community to be a community large enough to have a U.S. Post Office assigned to it. We have, so far, assembled a tentative list of one hundred and forty-four barrier island communities.

The goals of BIOWNET are the exchange of ideas and discussions of problems common to barrier island communities, some of which follow: ocean conservation --- protection of seashore animal habitats and sea creatures --- clean beaches --- dune protection and rebuilding using natural methods --- dune vegetation --- elimination of estuary, bay, and ocean point and non-point source pollution --- water quality --- living on barrier islands in an ecologically responsible way.

preliminary survey, we have received enthusiastic responses from the following universities and institutions: University of Texas, Bureau of Economic Geology, University of South Alabama Marine Consortium on Dauphin Island, South Carolina Coastal Council, University of Maryland Laboratory for Coastal Research, The Island Institute in Maine, The Coastal Society, The Heritage Conservation and Recreation Services of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the Barnegat Light and Cape May Coast Guard Station commanders.

Persons not living in a barrier island community, but who are interested in the BIOWNET are welcome to participate in the project. BIOWNET's conference name on the Institute for Global Communication's (IGC) EcoNet is env.biownet.

You can receive articles from the BIOWNET conference by transmitting the following e-mail message:
To: [email protected]
Subject: (leave blank)
Body of Message: subscribe biownet-1

A message or an article can be posted on the BIOWNET conference bulletin board by sending it to --- [email protected].