It’s Eelgrass Planting Season!
Learn about our process and how you can help!
CCE Marine Program has been restoring coastal habitats, including eelgrass meadows, for over 35 years. Thanks to funding support from the South Shore Estuary Reserve Program and continued Southampton Town Community Preservation Funds, these efforts have continued into 2026.
Bay scallops use byssal threads to attach high onto eelgrass during juvenile phase. Without this habitat, young bay scallops are at a much higher risk of being predated by crabs or other predators.
Eelgrass, our native seagrass also known as Zostera marina, is widely known as an essential habitat for Atlantic fish and invertebrate species including those we cherish as favorite food items at our local fish markets. For instance, our local bay scallop was once harvested from Long Island waters and distributed around the U.S. as they were plentiful and inarguably the most delicious. After the brown tides of the 1980’s and resulting loss of eelgrass in our waters, the bay scallop populations also plummeted, and we are still working towards recovery. Nearly all of our marine life utilizes the shelter provided by eelgrass in order to evade predators and forage, making these meadows some of the most biodiverse places in our waters.
But beyond the habitat benefits, seagrasses are some of the most effective carbon sinks on our planet, meaning they remove large amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, and store it as organic carbon in their roots and surrounding sediments, helping to combat climate change. Eelgrass also provides structural support to the sediment, preventing erosion during storm events and trapping suspended sediments from the water, mitigating damage to our shores.
New Planting Site in Sag Harbor
Kim Manzo planting eelgrass at Sag Harbor Shoal in 2016. Success at this long-term planting location has initiated momentum to find new sites in 2026.
Although CCE has been planting eelgrass at the Sag Harbor Shoals site since 2015, this work was only possible through annual fundraising and small scale sponsor donations (which we highly appreciate!)Thanks to Community Preservation Funds from the Town of Southampton and support from the Sag Harbor community, we are now able to increase the scale of our restoration and implement long-term monitoring efforts. We are not only continuing efforts in Shinnecock Bay, but seeking a new location in Peconic waters within Southampton Town (Sag Harbor).
Diver using a quadrat to count shoot density in our eelgrass meadows
Sag Harbor eelgrass has fluctuated in population over the years. At one time, eelgrass surrounded the harbor both on the Sag Harbor side as well as off of Mashomack Preserve across the harbor. Summer stressors overwhelm the eelgrass in our region in some years, resulting in die offs and fragmentation of existing meadows in the area. This is the case in Sag Harbor, which seems to be on the cusp of good water quality some years, and poor other years, based on weather patterns. Although there has been a steady decline in eelgrass in the Peconic Estuary overall, we have seen some expansion at our previous long-term planting site known as Sag Harbor Shoals (location receiving plantings since 2015).
The dive team went out to Sag Harbor last month to survey three sites for potential eelgrass plantings this fall, with one chosen as having the best potential. Two of the targeted areas are off of North Haven at a 6-8 ft depth MLW, and another closer to the breakwater/jetty near existing eelgrass. They collected video footage (pre-planting for a baseline) of each of the three sites, took 2 sediment cores for grain size and organic content (analysis to be run in December), and took shoot density from quadrat counts from the North Haven Shoal meadow as a reference. This week, they collected healthy eelgrass for our Marine Meadows event at Redwood Anchorage on Saturday, to be woven into burlap discs and planted into Sag Harbor next week! See below to register.
Continued Work in Shinnecock Bay
We also scouted for two new planting locations within Shinnecock Bay this summer, choosing one near the Heady Creek channel in eastern Shinnecock, and another location west of our sanctuary off of Tiana to see if it is feasible to expand the Sanctuary in the future. More on this to come in a future blog! Please check back for updates, and thanks for your interest in our work!
~ Kim Manzo