Tag: clamming

Can Long Island Be Saved, Part III — An Interview With Carl LoBue of The Nature Conservancy

We knew that if The Great South Bay was to be saved, it was going to have to be through bringing science to the problem. The people of The South Shore of Long Island needed to understand what the issues with the bay were, what was causing them, and what solutions were possible.

A couple of calls pointed me in Carl's direction, and soon he was sharing his knowledge and passion with the group, and helping us to understand what it would take to achieve our mission - to bring back the shellfish, the fish, the eelgrass, the marshes, the habitats that decades of neglect and decay had all but removed.

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A Breach of Protocol? Outdated Science Supporting Bureaucratic Decision Making on The Breach

Many of us (about 35 based on RSVPs, seeing people there) attended "Sandy's Silver Lining," A Public Forum on The Breach, held at Bellport Middle School on the 21st between 9:30 - 12:00. The response was strong even though it was the last shopping weekend before Christmas; this issue is still front and center for us, and so about 200 showed in total. Thomas Bruckner should be singled out as having done a marvelous job assembling the panel, and in the presentation, with informative segues between speakers where he showed pics and video from his some 30 trips to the breach / inlet. He's a natural MC. The sound system was out of whack, but we will get this fixed for next time, for yes, there will be next times, as what Commissioner Soller had to say make clear.

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“Long Island is All Clammed Up” – Is It Too Late For Our Bays?

It is important to remember that many of the land use issues discussed each week have real impacts to the lives of Long Islanders, and failure to heed economic and environmental warning signs can lead to real consequences. If we fail to protect our water system, the consequences will be dire.

In recent weeks, environmentalists, New York State government leaders, News 12 Long Island and others have been working on a public campaign to increase public awareness about Long Island’s drinking and surface waters. Failing to protect the aquifer is costly on a variety of fronts. With the recent call for state intervention, and the return of brown tide on the South Shore, it’s critical that action is taken sooner rather than later.

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Mapping The Rate of Septic Tank Seepage / Polluted Water Flow On Long Island

Our friends at Peconic Baykeeper are asking the government to start by tackling the biggest and dirtiest septic systems on Long Island.  As it stands, Peconic Baykeeper has filed suit against the NYSDEC for failing to include nitrogen limits in permits as required by the Clean Water Act.  When presented with Peconic Baykeeper's 200-page petition in September, the NYSDEC came back six months later with a half-page note asking for more information on the 1,338 sites.  Given the scale of the problem, we need a much greater sense of urgency if we are to save Long Island.

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The Breach Report July 8th, 2013 – Damaging Brown Tide Spreads Across Great South Bay, Cell Count Much Lower Near New Inlet – A Report From SCERP

DAMAGING BROWN TIDE SPREADS ACROSS GREAT SOUTH BAY
June rains kick starts event; Presence of The New Inlet keeps levels lower in Eastern Bay

Stony Brook, NY, July 8th 2013 – An intense and damaging brown tide has emerged across much of Great South Bay. Monitoring by The Gobler Laboratory of Stony Brook University has revealed that a brown tide developed in late June in western Great South Bay and has intensified and spread east since. Abundances of the brown tide organism were recorded at more than 1,000,000 cells per milliliter in western Great South Bay as of July 2nd in the region between the Robert Moses Bridge and Islip. Densities declined to less than 100,000 cells per milliliter within eastern Great South Bay. Densities above 100,000 cells per milliliter can be harmful to marine life. This marks the first summer brown tide in Great South Bay since 2008.

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Save The Great South Bay — A Grassroots Movement

Save The Great South Bay, a non-profit organization founded in August 2012, , is a local grassroots organization dedicated to the revitalization of the bay.

We want future generations to fish, clam and swim in these waters as we had. We want to restore marine and shoreline habitats so that the South Shore and beach communities that ring the bay can become sustainable for this century.

At present, we are at a moment of crisis. The water quality on Long Island is such that due to septic tank seepage, pesticides, storm runoff, and lawn and agricultural fertilizer, we may not have water to drink, bathe in and cook with before long. As our polluted ground water seeps into our aquifer, it also seeps into our rivers, bays and ponds, and it is killing our bodies of water at an accelerating pace, and the costs of over-development and poor infrastructure mount.

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WYNC Interviews Carl LoBue and Nancy Kelley of The Nature Conservancy on Water Quality and Importance of Restoring Clamming In The Great South Bay

Summer is right around the corner, which means many of us will head out to Long Island for clams bakes and time on the beach. But there’s a problem lurking in the waters around the Great South Bay. According to studies from The Nature Conservancy, excessive nitrogen is polluting the waterways.

“We have these symptoms in many places, either harmful algal blooms, some of which are actually toxic to fish and wildlife, some of which are toxic to people,” said Carl LoBue, The Nature Conservancy’s senior marine scientist on Long Island. “So that actually has a big impact on which fish enter our bays, which fish are healthy to eat. And then in some places, like Western Long Island Sound where the water is deep, we get hypoxic dead zones, like you might hear about in the Gulf of Mexico.”

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