Back to the Bays Midsummer Update

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Aug 2

Our Back to the Bays Team has been busy to say the least this summer! The majority of our fieldwork, and plant and animal care in our shellfish and coastal plant nurseries takes place during these warm weather months. And it takes a lot of hard work to keep everything thriving and growing. We’ve already conducted shellfish deployments at our spat-on-shell oyster reef sites in Montauk and Hampton Bays, and next up will be Sag Harbor, Quogue, and Shelter Island in the weeks ahead.

We have also embarked on an extensive monitoring effort this season, looking at things like larval recruitment of oysters at our reef sites, growth rates of our eelgrass meadows and shellfish in our Stewardship Sites and Sanctuaries, and faunal utilization of these restored habitats. We’ve deployed light and temperature loggers at our current and prospective Stewardship Sites to best assess restoration potential. Collecting basic water quality data will help us to identify trends, climate change impacts, and other influences on our target species.

*Temperature Logger deployment at current and prospective Stewardship Sites and Sanctuaries, used to assess restoration potential and site suitability.*

Our Stewardship Sessions are in full swing, and we have a great group of volunteers helping us on a variety of projects each week at our Tiana Bayside Facility, in Hampton Bays. We’ve expanded our coastal plant nursery operation and increased our marsh grass propagation efforts in preparation for some larger living shoreline projects we have in the works, and have stocked our BuDS (buoy deployed seeding) nets with eelgrass flower shoots to seed our ever growing restoration site meadows. We will be working with bay scallops, seahorses and clams in the weeks and months ahead so encourage you to sign up for an upcoming Tiana Tuesday Stewardship Session to get involved, and check out our events calendar for updates on upcoming shellfish seeding events!

*Marsh Grass Propagation Stewardship Session at Tiana Bayside Facility, Hampton Bays*

We’ve also been doing a lot of planning and behind the scenes work to expand our Stewardship Site network. We are excited to have permits in hand to enable new oyster reefs to be established in Quogue and Sag Harbor, and are doing the initial site suitability monitoring and permitting work to welcome a new North Fork site into the fold next year thanks to the support of the North Fork Polar Bears who will be sponsoring this site - more details to come! Work is also underway to plan for some very exciting new efforts and events in celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the Back to the Bays Initiative in 2025.

All of this important work cannot be done without the support of our community partners, stewards, donors and grant funding entities so thank you to all who continue to make it possible for us to give back to the bays! I hope to see you at some of our upcoming programs and events, and look forward to seeing this initiative continue to grow over the next decade-but for now let’s finish the summer season strong. Special shout out to our college interns, jr. interns and ambassadors who have been working side by side with our dedicated staff to make all of this work.