Breach Update

Photo-mosaic from Dr Charles Flagg’s latest flight on March 16, 2022. Click the image to see the full article.

Below is an excerpt from the February 2022 report by Dr Charles Flagg in regards to the breach at the old inlet:

Dr. Charles Flagg took another flight over the Breach at Old Inlet on Fire Island on February 16, 2022. The flyover mosaic is available below. Dr. Flagg conducted the flight after noticing that the salinities at Bellport Bay were low and he was curious if the Breach had closed. The flight took place around 9AM, about 1.5 hours past high tide in the ocean. He noted that there is an interesting amount of dry land in the flood delta.

This following is an excerpt from the October 2021 report from Dr Charles Flagg regarding the breach at the old inlet:

Below are two oblique photos of the breach taken yesterday, November 3rd, by Rich Giannotti. Rich has been part of the breach monitoring effort from the very beginning and has provided much support and the occasional important photos of the breach. These latest photos taken near a spring low tide show an extensive ebb (offshore) delta that has developed over the past few months. Hints of its development have shown up in March (see John Vahey’s photos) and in some of the high altitude, ~4000 ft, photos taken earlier this year but Rich’s beautiful photos provide an update and much more detail. (The photos are up on the project website, http://po.msrc.sunysb.edu/GSB/.)

The full report is available here.

Additionally, here is video of a fly over of the area in late October 2021, by Mike Busch

The full article by Mike is available via www.fireislandandbyeond.com.

Gino Macchio Foundation plants 20K more oysters with Friends of Bellport Bay

(original article by Nicholas Grasso, Greater Long Island & Greater Patchogue)

The Friends of Bellport Bay played doctor Saturday morning.

Their patients: 38 oysters.

The nonprofit dedicated to improving the water quality of Bellport Bay since 2015 performed a checkup on a sack full of oysters from a natural reef that’s about 1.5 million oysters strong off Bellport Village.

The oysters were picked from the eastern end of the reef, where more than 200,000 oysters donated by the Gino Macchio Foundation had been planted in the past year.

Workers and volunteers from both nonprofit groups gathered at the dock that warm autumn morning to assess the health and wellness of their collaborative efforts, perform an autopsy on oysters that had died — and breath new life into the bay with an additional 20,000 newly planted oysters.

“The goal is to pull up a sample to demonstrate the survival rate,” said Thomas Schultz, the president and chief of water operations for FOBB. “Traditionally in this field it’s been very high. It’s been 75%, 80%.”

To retrieve Saturday’s sample, FOBB called in Gregg Rivara, a short slender man with 40 years of scuba diving experience and an affinity for marine life since childhood, from the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County.

“I grew up on Jamaica Bay, working on the water with my father, he was a dock builder,” Rivara said. “I’m gonna be cool as a cucumber down there.”

He, along with Larissa Chraim and Maria Slavnova, two workers from FOBB, hopped on a small motorboat captained by Shultz. The diver donned about 80 pounds in gear and went underwater at 9:35a.m. He was breathing fresh air at 9:45a.m.

‘a very healthy sign’

After birthing back at the dock, Chraim and Slavnova began sorting deceased oysters from those in good health. Ken Daly, the executive director of the Gino Macchio Foundation, watched their work, alongside two distinguished guests: Gino Macchio’s grandparents, Ralph Macchio Sr. and Rosali Macchio, wearing matching foundation jackets with their grandson’s “I Got You” mantra across the back.

“It’s bringing back memories of Gino, what he pushed for and his wishes,” Ralph Macchio Sr. said.

Of the 38 oysters Rivara scooped up, 27 survived, indicating a survival rate of approximately 71%.

Rivara, now free from his flippers, walked on the scene and explained the survival rate they determined should not be taken as representative of the entire reef, which Shultz said is likely closer to 80%, as he purposefully located and bagged several deceased oysters to perform an autopsy on several subjects.

Chraim began measuring the healthy oysters, taking time to review the sponges, Crepidula fornicata, or quarterdeck shells, crabs and other marine life that hitched a ride ashore on the oysters’ shells, while Slavnova recorded their sizes in her notebook.

Rivara looked over the oysters that did not make it. Their time of death was not determined, but the blue claw crab was declared the likely culprit based on the chipping away at the edge of the shell.

“This is very normal and a very healthy sign,” Schultz said of losing the foundation species to the ten-legged predator. “Blue claw crabs are happy and they have a good source of food. And when the crabs are prospering, flounder and fluke and other bottom selling fish are happy and the entire food chain above begins to prosper.”

a fresh batch

After examining the oysters, Chraim and Schultz climbed aboard the Gino Macchio Foundation water taxi alongside foundatin employees Ethan Doutney and Steven Rafalko, as well as crates loaded with 20,000 healthy oysters.

The Gino Macchio Foundationed purchased this haul of oysters from various farmers in the Great South Bay and donated them to the FOBB’s natural reef. Shultz and Rafalko threw the 20,000 natural filters overboard in the hopes they will further imporve the water quality and the overall health of the Great South Bay’s ecosystem.

For Gino Macchio, who passed away in a motorcycle accident after working on oyster farms, reviving the Great South Bay was a crucial mission, one the foundation that bears his name aims to carry out.

Rosali Macchio said her grandson would have been very excited seeing Saturday’s work.

“We’re very proud of his vision,” she said. “And we’re happy seeing it come to life.”

Upcoming Eelgrass Restoration Workshop

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.