By Rick VanVranken, Agricultural and Resource Management Agent, Rutgers NJAES Cooperative Extension of Atlantic County August “Augie” Wuillermin, co-owner/operator with his brother, Ed Jr., of Ed Wuillermin & Sons Farm in Hammonton, NJ, turned in disgust and grumbled, “Some days I just have to stay out [of the packing house] when the peppers come in […]
Archives for September 2014
Student Attendance Soars at Community Day Video
The idea of devoting a day for students to get to know their community is not full of hot air. The video below is Rutgers Today’s take on Community Day.
Alumni Story: Lester Brown (Ag’55), Environmental Roots
Editor’s Note: One of the most prestigious honors conferred on alumni of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is induction into the Hall of Distinguished Alumni (HDA). The School of Environmental and Biological Sciences is proud of its 16 HDA honorees. This is one of a series of stories about them. It’s one thing […]
Rutgers Joins USDA Northeast Climate Hub to Address Needs of Natural Resource Managers
Farmers, forest landowners and other natural resource managers, whose livelihoods depend on the reliability of seasonal cycles, are on the forefront of climate change. When anticipated local conditions are disrupted, conventional practices no longer suffice and land managers have to tread new ground. There’s assistance, however, in the Northeast region of the U.S. in the […]
Tasty Mutants: The Invention of the Modern Oyster
If you slurped down any oysters on the half-shell this summer, you probably didn’t realize they were monsters. Not monsters in the pejorative sense, but man made creatures – the invention of a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. That Dr. Frankenstein, in this…
Learning about, helping N.J.’s horseshoe crabs
They look like tiny coriander seeds. And 6,000 of them can easily fit into the bottom of a half-dozen buckets filled with seawater. But the young horseshoe crabs released into the Cape May Canal on Friday, as part of the 26th anniversary of National Estuaries Day, are the essentials of a grow-and-release program at the Rutgers Aquaculture Innovation Center here…”They’re important to us because they play such a vital role in the health of the bay and provide myriad benefits to the local fishing industry, migratory shorebirds population, and the state’s biomedical industry,” said Michael P. De Luca, senior associate director of Rutgers Institute Marine and Coastal Sciences, which operates the center.
Rutgers lab churning out baby horseshoe crabs
Six thousand baby horseshoe crabs are making their way in the waters near Cape May this weekend, thanks to a Rutgers University center that grows and releases them into the wild. The New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center released the hatchlings, eac…
Boost your child’s chance of growing up healthy
A new project launched by Rutgers aims to help parents creates healthier, happier, safer homes and lifestyles. Parents have so many time and budget pressures these days, it makes it a challenge to be sure their kids have what they need to grow up healthy. “We spent thousands of hours surveying, observing, and talking to parents across New Jersey to find out what we could do to help them do an even better job raising their kids,” says Carol Byrd-Bredbenner, Rutgers Professor. “We used all this information to create the new HomeStyles program.”
Release project in Cape helps horseshoe crab hatchlings avoid predators
You could call it a Head Start program for horseshoe crabs. Normally the crabs have a tough learning curve. They are born on the sandy Delaware Bay coast, the largest breeding ground in the world for the species, and predators immediately try to eat them…A Rutgers University project at its Aquaculture Innovation Center on the Cape May Canal is giving some of the young crabs a three-month head start in life…”We’ve released 50,000 to 75,000 a year. It can make a difference because they’re so susceptible to predation. Striped bass, bluefish and other finfish feast on young-of-the-year crabs,” said Michael De Luca, a director at the university’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences.
Open Space Pace draws attention to connection between horse industry and land preservation
Besides the opportunity to view an equine parade down Freehold’s Main Street followed by an afternoon of harness racing, the third annual Open Space Pace (OSP) offered attendees the chance to learn about many of the horse-related businesses and organiz…