Here's how crews move all that sand from ocean floor to the Jersey Shore

The beach replenishment project on Long Beach Island is expected to be completed after Labor Day Watch video

BARNEGAT LIGHT -- Much their time aboard the Dredge Liberty Island for Capt. James "Woody" Hoffman and his crew is deja vu.

For weeks at a time, they sail back and forth between an underwater island in the Atlantic from which they suck tons of sand onto their ship and then pump it onto the New Jersey coastline.

Theirs is a job that goes mostly unnoticed as the state continues with a massive but controversial federal beach replenishment project. But in a rare glimpse at the operation, the head of New Jersey's environmental protection agency and NJ Advance Media got an inside look at how the millions of cubic yards of sand are first collected before being deposited on the shoreline.

"I know the steps we go through (for design) and I know the work they do there on shore, but this is the other side of it," said DEP Commissioner Bob Martin. "How do we get the sand and how to we get it to shore? It's not a simple answer. It's complex stuff."

The $138 million project hasn't had smooth sailing. Dozens of oceanfront property owners in Long Beach Township refused to voluntarily give the DEP the easements needed to do the work on their property. That's left the state and town taking the property owners to court to take the tracts through eminent domain.

And to the anger of state and local officials, Great Lakes temporarily pulled out of the work over the winter to head to projects in other areas of the country.

Taking the route that other Liberty Island crew use, Martin boarded a 60-foot boat that shuttled him to the dredge 3 miles off Long Beach Island where Capt. Woody and his crew of 19 were waiting.

Approaching the Liberty Island, the 60-foot crew boat was dwarfed by a dredge three city blocks long and as high as a small skyscraper. That 315-foot vessel is Capt. Woody's home for three weeks at a time.

At 55, Capt. Woody, of Panama City, Fla., has worked as a merchant mariner most of his life, beginning at around age 14 when he started on fishing boats. For the past 20 years, he's worked for Illinois-based Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co., one of the few companies in the world with the ability to tackle beach replenishment projects.

The sand for Long Beach Island's project is coming from what's been likened to an underwater island running 3 to 5 miles off Barnegat Light. Some of its peeks are 3 miles high, making those spots good targets for the sand. Keith Watson, project engineer for the Army Corps, says the federal agency has to carefully choose its source of sand so that, among other things, it matches the beach where it's headed.

At the "borrow" area, the Liberty Island lowers on davits two large suction pipes 30 inches in diameter- one on each side - into the ocean. Like vacuum hoses, these pipes suck up the sand that is loosened by jets of water and by drag heads with cutter teeth fastened to the end of the pipe.

It takes about an hour to fill the ship's hold with sand. That's 5,000 cubic yards at a time - the equivalent of 500 dump trucks.

With its load, the Liberty Island sails about 20 minutes to a buoy marking an underwater pipe laid months earlier. Hooking up to that pipe, the dredge discharges that load of sand onto a beach that could be as far as 3 miles away, Capt. Woody said.

After that hour-long discharge, the Liberty Island returns to the "borrow" site, digs for another hour and heads back to the discharge pipe, which is pumping onto the Loveladies and North Beach sections of Long Beach Island.

In that 24-hour operation, Capt. Woody and his crew make that pass six or seven times a day with mate Rick McClenton steering the vessel and drag tender Billy Born keeping an eye on what's coming into the hold and watching the gauges and computer screens that show an animation of what's going on below the surface.

Two other smaller dredges - the Padre Island and the Dodge Island - keep a similar schedule farther south in other sections of Long Beach Island.

By the time the project is finished, about 10 million cubic yards of sand will have been pumped onto 12.7 miles of coastline in Long Beach Township, Ship Bottom, Beach Haven and a small section of Surf City. After construction, the beaches will be anywhere between 250 feet and 350 feet wide and have 22-foot high dunes.

North Beach should be finished within a week and the work in Loveladies should be completed shortly after Labor Day, Watson said.