Partnering on cleaner waters

Linda Leuzzi - LI Advance
(link to original article)

Patchogue resident Ethan Doutney, manager of operations for the Gino Macchio Foundation and assistant Steven Rafalko, were stationed at the Bellport Marina well before 9 a.m. Saturday morning. “This is our modified water taxi, a 383 Stoker,” said Doutney, of the grey vessel crammed with boxes of oysters. “We have 20,000 oysters here we’ll be planting.”

The Gino Macchio Foundation teamed up with Friends of Bellport Bay on their restoration mission; Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County Aquaculture Specialist Gregg Rivera was poised to dive to determine the health of oysters planted in Bellport Bay’s shellfish sanctuary. Strapped with 80 pounds of scuba apparatus on his back, he’d be underwater for an hour.
“He monitors the health of oysters twice a year,” said Thomas Schultz, president and co-founder of Friends of Bellport Bay with Katia Read, who is vice president.
They both showed up wearing boating gear; Schultz and Read would go out on a clam boat donated by John Denaro.
Later Schultz reported the results: “We pulled 38 total oysters from the bay bottom,” he said. “Out of the total, 11 were dead were from blue claw crab predation, and 27 were prospering; this translates to a 71 percent survival rate. It’s not a true scientific study but it does provide an indicator.” Schultz said the average size of the sample was 99 mm or 3.9 inches in size. “Having a loss is expected,” he said. “You expect to see predation. The blue claw crabs are happy; they eat the oyster and we’re establishing an ecosystem. Shellfish are the building blocks of that.”

Gino Macchio Foundation executive director Ken Daly and his wife Marguerite had made the trip to the dock as well. The non profit was started after Gino, who was passionate about helping the oyster industry clean up the Great South Bay, died tragically in 2018 in a motorcycle accident. He’d already created significant devices to help adult and young oysters thrive. The non-profit is headquartered in Bay Shore and Daly mentioned their big gala, which would help shellfish restoration as well as people in recovery, was scheduled for October 28 at Captain Bill’s from 6 p.m. 9 p.m.
“We’ve already planted 500,000 oysters,” Daly said. The goal is 1 million by next year. The non-profit foundation works with Islip Town’s shellfish farm. Last year, they partnered with The Nature Conservancy and The Pew Charitable Trusts as well as FoBB to plant tens of thousands of overstocked shellfish from shellfish farmers whose businesses were affected by Covid.
The value of these shellfish can’t be overestimated; they filter 50 gallons of water a day.
For those new to Friends of Bellport Bay, the non-profit had its beginnings when Katia Read partnered with Thomas Schultz in 2016 in their quest to clean Bellport Bay’s waters. Read got a DEC permit and established an oyster garden off her dock stocking it with spat, (baby oysters). Since then, a shellfish sanctuary has been established in Bellport Bay and Brookhaven Town, which has donated spat regularly, has become an enthusiastic supporter. (FoBB also plants scallops, clams and eelgrass.)

FOBB Fridays - Encouraging oysters and environmentalists

Linda Leuzzi - LI Advance
(link to original article)

FOBB executive director Rae Specht (red shirt) stands with intern Jesus (Manny) Maldonado as sisters and volunteers Nikolle Slavnova (standing over tank) and Maria Slavnova (far left with orange bucket) set up an experiment with young FOBB Fridays participants.

ADV/LEUZZI

Friends of Bellport Bay executive director Rae Specht sat in the marina gazebo, keeping an eye on the interns and youngsters who arrived early at the FOBB Fridays program last week.

“I wanted to make an oyster-specific camp,” said Specht, who added that the interactive inspiration came from programs with CEED. “It’s a mix of education [and] also volunteerism for teens 13 to 18. We put them to work in a fun way.”

Thirty-two kids have been participants in the FOBB Fridays program in July: three-hour sessions in the morning for 9-to-12-year-olds, three hours in the afternoon for 13-to-15-year-olds.

Before kids started lugging sand and bay water into two tanks positioned at the shoreline, Specht provided a description of the various sessions.

“For the first program, we were rained out, so we went to the Community Center and did gyotaku, Japanese fish painting,” she said.

What’s that?

In 19th-century Japan, fishermen found a way to record their prize catches, Specht explained. Gyotaku, or fish rubbing, was a way for the fishermen to print inked fish onto paper, creating a permanent record of their size. Nontoxic sumi-e ink was used, a black ink used in writing and painting that could easily be washed off. After the print was made, the fish were released or sold at the marketplace.

“We used local fish (they were already dead) from Mastic Seafood,” Specht said of the activity. “Then we brought oysters to the Community Center and did random samplings of juvenile oysters and facts about them.”

At another session, “we had Cornell Cooperative Extension talk to us about the importance of eelgrass,” Specht added. Burlap discs were made by the youngsters. Cornell would then seed the burlap discs with eelgrass and drop them into nearby areas like Fishers Island and John Boyle Island in the fall.

“Today, we’ll do an experiment,” she said. “We’ll fill up two tanks with sand and bay water and put a number of oysters and clams in one of the tanks.”

There were interns like Jesus (Manny) Maldonado and Thaleia Neal with volunteers, sisters Nikolle and Maria Slavnova.

The tank with the shellfish would reveal their grace in filtering water, which emerges pristine. (Oysters can filter 50 gallons of water per day; large clams can filter 24 gallons.) The tank without the shellfish would, well, look like a cloudy mess. In the afternoon, the young people would be motored out by boat so they could plant oysters in FOBB’s sanctuary.

For those not in the know about Friends of Bellport Bay, this nonprofit founded by Thomas Schultz and Katia Read, has already planted 1 million oysters in Bellport Bay since 2015; 500,000 more are planned for 2021. Specht has been onboard as executive director for the last year.

No set fee for the program was required; parents pay what they want as contributions to FOBB.

Andres Newman, 12, was upfront about why he came to FOBB Fridays.

“I spend a lot of time on the bay,” he said. “I want the bay to be clean so I can swim in it more. I feel it would benefit a lot of people if it were cleaner.”

Bodhi Griffiths, 10, who surfs, said, “I like hanging out in the ocean and learning about new species and how the oysters make the water cleaner.”

Later on, they would attend the art showcase at Gallery 125 and view the creations they produced, including the fish prints and those from Katia Read’s ceramics workshop that were bay-inspired.

Supporting oyster aquaculture and restoration

The Long Island Advance wrote up a great article about how FoBB and other organizations are purchasing surplus oysters that are available due to the pandemic and planting these oysters to help improve the waters of the Great South Bay. Read more…

The Nature Conservancy, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Gino Macchio Foundation partner with FoBB to plant 160,000 oysters

Thank you to The Nature Conservancy, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Gino Macchio Foundation for making it possible for FoBB to plant 160,000 adult spawning oysters in Bellport Bay. This weekend, dedicated volunteers boarded the Gino Macchio Foundation barge and planted the oysters in our protected sanctuary. Read more about the Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration (SOAR) initiative by clicking the link below:

https://www.litimes.org/2020/12/04/replanting-effort-aids-local-oyster-farmers/