For a hundred years, wave by wave, Mordecai Island was slowly splitting in two. The barrier island off New Jersey's Barnegat Bay had been eroding bit by bit for decades. But then, in 2015, the engineers tried something simple. They placed dredged sediment back onto the island. As per the 2020 NOAA Technical Memorandum "Ecological Assessment of the Beneficial Use of Dredged Sediments for Island Restoration: Mordecai Island, Barnegat Bay, NJ," which observed the island over the following three years, the solution worked, although the same study pointed out an issue that might arise in the future.
A century of erosion split the island in two