well when it comes to saving the Jersey coastline coconuts could be the answer scientists in Shore towns are turning to the humble fruit to help fight against beach erosion it turns out the outer husks of coconut shells are more like a secret weapon they help natural Beach grasses to grow and they're a savior to marshes along the beach Ted Goldberg reports as part of our ongoing series Peril and promise that looks at the human stories of climate change the American literal Society has brought big changes to the Shoreline of the Shark River in Neptune you and I right now be standing in water there would not be a beach here at all so just picture that Al majeski is its habitat restoration program director he says the million dollar project includes introducing plants that grow roots and protect sand from erosion the plants themselves are protected by logs made out of coconuts yes coconuts which also absorb the energy from waves it doesn't reduce erosion it reduces erosion rates okay we're still going to have some of that erosion happening but what we're doing is establishing a more solidified kind of a shoreline using these logs it's sustainable it's uh biodegradable it's relatively inexpensive and it works very well in restoration practices where we're trying to re-establish the edge of a marsh or the edge of the beach quar or coconut fibers are also being used to reduce erosion rates in the Delaware Bay and Barnegat Bay the logs should last for a year and a half in the water and two to three years on Higher Ground you're adding something that's not a permanent structure into your Shoreline something that can go away after time once you plant and The Roots established and you bring back more of that natural Shoreline so it's not leaving any kind of like plastic residue or anything like that there was an initial proposal to build a hard wall a bulkhead here and the community said no we want to restore the natural environment and then they enlisted us to help them do that with a bulkhead you're not going to get the beach to come back it's just you know the way of action just reverberates off the metal bulkhead and moves out but this will allow sand to be deposited here and then lead to Wildlife and uh to come back and um it's it's fantastic because it's achieving the goal of of of uh preventing flooding in a natural way Rick and Martha Cottrell live two blocks off the river in the Shark River Hills section of Neptune they say this area was flooded badly during superstorm Sandy and they're happy to hear that a natural solution could help protect these homes from future floods I think it's much better for the environment you know the less metal the better it is around here you know we're so fortunate to live so close to the river and just enjoy the natural beauty of the dunes this project was paid for with FEMA money and by the township of Neptune the American literal Society has also been successful at creating living shorelines with oysters and they hope to see more coconut coir across the state we are really hopeful that people will see this project see the success of this project and invite us to do it elsewhere and that's really our long-term mission is to get these nature-based approaches much more common throughout the state of New Jersey will it last for 50 years we don't know you have to build upon that that's why we try to do these projects as low maintenance so we can build upon them in the future you know we're we're Dynamic and flexible just like the environment with these projects there is a catch with quar it can't be used in what's called a high energy environment or the coconut will break apart meaning quar is better suited for places like Bays or inlets compared to the ocean Coast in Neptune I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight news lead funding for parallel and promise is provided by Dr p Roy vagalos and Diana T vagalos major support is provided by the mark Haas foundation and Sue and Edgar wachenheim III and the Cheryl and Philip milstein family [Music]