Our 5 acre Stewardship Site off of Tiana Bayside serves as a designated sanctuary for shellfish and eelgrass. We have seen some of our most successful restoration results in NY waters at this location, enabling us to significantly expand the natural meadow within this area through a multitude of restoration practices. Both our adult shoot transplant “tortilla” method, and our Buoy Deployed seeding method have yielded great success and we continue to conduct this work annually to ensure the eelgrass meadows continues to expand and serve as essential habitat to our commercially and recreationally important finfish and shellfish species. The meadow also serves an important coastal resiliency function, and functions as a Blue Carbon zone in our bay.

Coastal restaurants typically go through thousands of pounds of oyster shell in one season, all of which often gets sent to a landfill. However, these shells hold incredible ecological value! When wild oysters spawn, the larvae seek the shells of other oysters onto which they will set and grow into elaborate reef structures, offering crucial habitat for a menagerie of other marine species.

Our key shell recycling partner for this location is Fauna restaurant in Westhampton Beach! The shell that is collected supports our oyster reef restoration efforts in Hampton Bays and at our other Back to the Bays Stewardship Sites.

With recent funding and community support in 2025, we have added Pine Neck as a new location for curing shell before it can be used.

Oysters are considered a “keystone species” for marine ecosystems because of their incredible ability to filter water and create a complex reef structure as they grow, offering critical habitat for many important species. Oyster reefs also help to buffer storm surges, which reduces coastal erosion.

Working in tandem with our Back to the Bays Shell Recycling Program, we have continued to expand our spat-on-shell oyster reefs annually, both in our sanctuary and other designated areas within Southampton Town waters. With annual plantings from 2022-2025 we deployed over 200,000 spat-on-shell oysters, set on 114 cubic feet of clean shell to our Tiana Bayside oyster reef.

These reefs are not intended to be harvested, but rather to improve water quality, restore habitat, and help enhance the wild oyster population. 

CCE Marine has been working with the Town of Southampton to utilize the site for propagating American beachgrass, used various in restoration projects, and growing out a diversity of native shrubs and coastal pollinator plants.

Our Coastal Plant Nursery also serves as an important educational site for students and volunteers to work. In summer 2025, we introduced Monarch butterflies to our camp curriculum, sheltering them from predators and allowing them to lay eggs on our milkweed plants, the exclusive food source of the Monarch caterpillar.

With additional funding, we aim to expand our Tiana garden, adding a greenhouse, and create a new nursery at Pine Neck Park, with a large area for plant propagation.

We have seeded millions of shellfish in Southampton Town waters over the years through our partnership with the Southampton Trustees, and a recent grant from the Town enabled us to expand upon this work.

In 2021 we were able to establish the first bay scallop nursery in Shinnecock Bay based out of our Tiana Bayside Facility. This was an important first step to being able to scale up bay scallop restoration efforts in this region. Thanks to community support and an additional grant from Southampton Town this vital work has been able to continue through 2025, adding to the 250,000 bay scallops that we have seeded within our Stewardship Site and at additional receiving areas in Town waters.

Horseshoe Crabs have been around for over 450 million years! From May to June, mating pairs come to shore to lay eggs, providing food for shore birds. Humans rely on their special blood to detect bacteria in medical devices and vaccines.

Back to the Bays has been managing the Tiana Bayside Horseshoe Crab site since 2021. This site is part of the New York Horseshoe Crab Monitoring Network, a joint effort with CCE Marine Program, Stony Brook University, and the DEC to tag and count horseshoe crabs. Data collected helps inform policy that can help protect this important population for generations to come.

Eelgrass is the preferred habitat of our native seahorse species, the Northern Lined Seahorse (Hippocampus erectus). Seahorses evolved prehensile tails to cling to eelgrass and other stable structures, allowing them to remain in their territory with their pair-bonded mate.

Not all sites are suitable for restoring eelgrass, so to help address seahorse habitat needs, we are working to deploy “seahorse hotels” to create stable, long-term habitat sites for seahorses to return to annually.

In summer 2025 community stewards gathered to help build new Seahorse Hotels, which will be deployed in areas of Tiana Bay that are currently lacking eelgrass.