ANDREW S. LEWIS / NJ SPOTLIGHT NEWS – Autumn in New Jersey often means the arrival of the highest tides of the year. Right on time, early October’s new moon brought several days of well-above-average high tides made worse by persistent easterly winds, which, on the Jersey Shore, act like a bulldozer, pushing ocean water into back bays and holding it there, against the will of outgoing tides.

For several days, whole swaths of back-bay wetlands, dry on normal high tides, were consumed by the water for hours at a time, only the tips of their cordgrass meadows poking above the rolling waves …