Volunteer With Us!
Save the Great South Bay is a volunteer-driven organization. We work with hundreds of volunteers each year and can’t do what we do with people like YOU! There are many ways to help – join a Creek Defender clean up in your neighborhood, raise baby oysters over the summer, or if you’re handy with a camera, help us capture our volunteers in action! Community service is available at all events.
Creek Defender Clean Ups
  Beach Clean Up with Lessings Hospitality
Gilgo Beach
10/11/25
9 am – 11 am
Oakdale Clean Up
Byron Lake Pool Parking Lot
10/25/25
10 am – 12 pm
Patchogue Clean Up
Tuthills Creek
10/18/25
9 am – 11 am
Outreach Events
Support our efforts to spread the word that it is up to all of us to help heal the Great South Bay by helping us man an info table at fun community events, like the Great South Bay Music Festival, the Sayville Seafood Festival & others!
Oyster Gardens
What’s Involved?
Between June and September , we plant over 150,000 baby oysters in our Community Oyster Gardens along the South Shore—and we need your help to care for them! Oysters are the miracle mollusk that will help us restore the Bay. Did you know one oyster can filter 50 gallons of water in one day? With support from volunteers like you, we’ll tend to these oysters each week, preparing them for their big move to the Great South Bay in September, where they can put their natural filtration skills to work.
Volunteers spend about an hour cleaning oyster crates, counting, and measuring the oysters to track their growth. You can volunteer for a single day or come back as often as you like—every visit makes a difference!
All work is done dockside, so there’s no need to get in the water. All gear is provided. Just come in clothes you don’t mind getting a little dirty or wet.
Click to see all of our upcoming volunteer opportunities & choose one to Start Where You Stand.Â