Diving Ducks and Oyster Beds

The mouth of the Housatonic River and the stretch of Long Island Sound immediately to the east and west is one of the richest natural spawning areas for oysters not only in the Sound but probably in the northeast.

Oysters that spawn in the Housatonic populate the mouth of the river, and currents sweep oyster larvae around Stratford Point, where they settle out on Bridgeport Natural Bed, a four-square mile area from Point No Point to Black Rock that is so important to the Sound’s oystermen that state regulators allow oyster boats to use hand-powered dredges only, so as not to damage the beds with power dredges.

I visited Stratford Point today to learn about Connecticut Audubon Society’s habitat restoration project there, and in the course of an hour’s conversation with Scott Kruitbosch, Connecticut Audubon’s conservation technician, some interesting speculation about the Housatonic oyster beds emerged.

Last year at this time, Scott told me, there were “massive” numbers of diving ducks on the mouth of the river. Greater and Lesser Scaup. White-winged Scoters and Surf Scoters, maybe Black Scoters, as well as Redheads and King Eider.

This year, nothing. The protected cove to the north has plenty of dabblers -- American Wigeon, Black Ducks, Gadwall -- but the diving ducks are not around.

The diet of diving ducks includes small oysters. The speculation by Connecticut Audubon’s conservation staff -- a guess, really -- is that something happened to the oyster beds. And the further speculation is that what happened was Hurricane Irene.

Numerous oystermen reported in September that the storm had damaged their equipment and smothered their oyster beds with sand and mud. Historically, the infamous hurricane of 1938 did so much damage -- wrecking oyster boats and oyster beds -- that it almost wiped out the Sound’s oyster industry. It took two decades for it to recover.

I haven’t seen a full assessment of the damage that Irene did to the Sound’s oysters. But if the lack of diving ducks on the Housatonic is an indication, the damage includes not only the Sound’s oystermen but possibly the wildlife that relies on the Sound’s oysters as well.

[This is also my first post for Connecticut Audubon Society's blog, which you can read here.]

Oysters for Everyone, Even Vegans

I saw this in the Times this morning, and then read the original in Slate. I'm neither a vegan nor a vegetarian but I found it to be a fascinating argument in favor of eating oysters (which I'm in favor of because they taste great and they're actually good for the environment -- an ideal sustainable food):

Oysters may be animals, but even the strictest ethicist should feel comfortable eating them by the boatload. ...

But what if we could find an animal that thrived in a factory-farm cage, one that subsisted on nutrients plucked from the air and that was insensate to the slaughterhouse blade? Even if that animal looked like a bunny rabbit crossed with a puppy, it would be A-OK to hack it into pieces for your dinner plate. Luckily for those of us who still haven't gotten over the death of Bambi's mother, the creature I'm thinking of is decidedly less cuddly. Biologically, oysters are not in the plant kingdom, but when it comes to ethical eating, they are almost indistinguishable from plants. Oyster farms account for 95 percent of all oyster consumption and have a minimal negative impact on their ecosystems; there are even nonprofit projects devoted to cultivating oysters as a way to improve water quality. Since so many oysters are farmed, there's little danger of overfishing. No forests are cleared for oysters, no fertilizer is needed, and no grain goes to waste to feed them—they have a diet of plankton, which is about as close to the bottom of the food chain as you can get. Oyster cultivation also avoids many of the negative side effects of plant agriculture: There are no bees needed to pollinate oysters, no pesticides required to kill off other insects, and for the most part, oyster farms operate without the collateral damage of accidentally killing other animals during harvesting. ...

Oyster Gardening

I love this program, called the Rhode Island Oyster Gardening for Restoration and Enhancement. Here's how a Massachusetts paper called South Coast Today describes it:

The program, known as RI-OGRE ... works by enlisting community volunteers, such as homeowners with docks and boat owners with mooring balls, to provide a secure temporary home for floating cages of baby oysters. The oyster floats, 3 feet by 4 feet wide, contain mesh bags with seed oysters that, when sufficiently large, can be planted around the bay. Oyster gardening seeks to restore water quality and permit oyster populations to become self-sustaining. There is no intent to harvest what is grown.

And this...

"Oysters have tremendous filter feeding capacities and they improve the water quality by filtering between 50 and 60 gallons of water a day," said Steve Patterson, the shellfish field manager at Roger Williams University, which operates the Narragansett Bay gardening program. "Oysters are a keystone species in estuaries in that they also provide habitat for creatures like silversides, mummichog and baby crabs that make up the beginning of the estuary food webs," he said.

Apparently it's been going on in New York:

The NY/NJ Baykeeper gardening program has been operating since 2000.

There, gardened oysters are planted on reef restoration sites in order to provide spawning adult oysters according to Christine M. Lynn, oyster program assistant with the Baykeeper program. But concerns about a potential health threat if gardened oysters are sold commercially have also become an issue in New Jersey, she said. "I think the oyster gardening programs in South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina are far ahead of us in terms of acceptance from regulators, but this is mostly because they still have relatively pristine waters to work in," Lynn said.

Since its inception around Narragansett Bay, oyster gardening has benefitted the environment and should be encouraged said Dale Leavitt, associate professor of marine biology at Roger Williams University.

"It's certainly obvious that the services the oysters provide make it worth putting them out there," he said. "As far as the disease issues that caused the demise of oysters in the first place, we're cleaning a lot of that stuff up now so there's a good chance for success in re-establishing these ecosystems they way they used to be. And there's a lot of value to that."

From a regulatory standpoint, the main obstacle remains the potential human health risk, Leavitt said.

Recovering Oysters

Hard work and lots of research mean oysters in Long Island Sound are doing better now and might be doing beter still in the future.

The Fish Cellar, in Mount Kisco, makes sure it identifies the oysters it sells by place of origin. We've always preferred east coast oysters (the best I've had were from Fishers Island) to Pacific Northwest oysters, although I'm not sure I'd put it exactly in the same terms as Inke Sunila, who works for the Bureau of Aquaculture in the Connecticut Agriculture department. She opined:

The Pacific oyster is slimy and gray and looks like something hanging from a cow's nose.

I hate to point this out but the Hartford Courant reporter spelled the name of Bloom's oyster boat wrong and got the name of the Norwalk Islands wrong. The Mary Colman (not Coleman) is above; the Catherine M. Wedmore, another of Norm Bloom's oyster boats, is below.

A Broad and Hard Look at Oysters in the Sound

Vince Breslin, a professor of science education and environmental studies at Southern Connecticut State's Center for Coastal and Marine Studies, has gotten a $270,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study oysters in Long Island Sound with a host of other educational institutions. Here's the nut graf from a New Haven Register story about it:

While scientists have studied various aspects of the Sound and its bivalve population piecemeal, the current study is intended to provide an all-inclusive record of currents, salinity, pollution, invasive species, sediment, temperature, micro-organism populations and other factors to be a base for future studies, Breslin said.

Breslin has drawn colleagues from SCSU, Central Connecticut State University, Western Connecticut State University, Wesleyan University and the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk.

The Sound School, in New Haven, is involved too.

Vince told me he's particularly excited because the grant will let them buy a DMA 80 direct mercury analyzer and a sediment grain-size analyzer. Here's what the Register says about that:

Breslin said he has used grant money to acquire a $40,000 instrument that can quickly measure mercury levels in oyster tissue. Older methods require time-consuming and complicated chemistry.

Breslin and colleagues also purchased a sediment grain-size analyzer. The old way of measuring grain sizes in a sample of sediment was to sift the material through a series of sieves. The process is slow. The new instrument uses a laser beam and optics to determine the percentages of different sized grains in a sample.

Ultimately, anyone researching oysters will be able to check dozens of sample points in the Sound, using a computer. Each sample site will reveal a wealth of information. The data also will be categorized and cross-linked in a number of ways to suit the different disciplines that are apt to employ the information.

(The photo is of oyster sloops on the Sound, courtesy of the Rowayton Historical Society.)

Direct from Norwalk: Lovejoy's White Rock and Grassy Hammock Oysters

Terry Backer read my earlier post about oysters, in which I referred to an old sign I had seen at his headquarters. I remember making note of what the sign said, but that notebook is long gone. But Terry remembered and sent me this, in an email:

That was a sign from the the Fredrick Lovejoy Oyster company. It advertised White Rock and Grassy Hammock oysters both place names in the harbor. I own one of those pieces of oyster ground now. The sign was from the 20s and 30s. It was and is common practice to name certain oysters after where they are grown. The location can contribute to the flavor of the oyster considerably thus by branding them with their place name can help people Id what they have had before.

Thanks, Terry!

Local Oysters

I'm not sure that naming oysters after the specific place they are grown and harvested is as new as this Times story suggests. I remember once, about 20 years ago, visiting Terry Backer in his old Soundkeeper office in Norwalk, and he showed me a sign he had salvaged from, if I remember correctly, the 1930s, that advertised oysters taken from the vicinity of one of the smaller Norwalk Islands. And Mark Kurlansky, in The Big Oyster, says that Saddle Rock oysters were so big that in the 1800s, 25 of them made up a bushel, which obviously suggests that in the 1800s, oysters were named after a specific place.

But that's a quibble. The Times story is fascinating, with lots of goood information about oyster growers, mainly on eastern Long Island, many of whom are Native Americans. Reading it made me want to go back to the Fish Cellar, in Mount Kisco, and eat a dozen Pine Islands from Oyster Bay.

More Oysters, Please

Roger Williams College, in Rhode Island, is working on restoring oysters to Narragansett Bay, and for good reason, the Providence Journal reports:

He likens oysters to powerful little water filters that clean more than 50 gallons of water a day, straining out the particles they feed on and depositing the rest at the bottom of rivers, salt ponds and estuaries. This reduces the turbidity of water, which allows more sunlight to support aquatic life, which bolsters fisheries, including habitat for lobster and winter flounder....

In theory, oysters could be deployed to highly polluted waters for the express purpose of filtration, Patterson said.

However, Rhode Island aquaculturists haven’t been aggressive about that so far because they worry about people eating oysters harvested from dirty water, he said.

Nonetheless, over the long term, the program hopes to make a visible impact on water quality in Narragansett Bay.

“If we can get a gazillion of these things out there filtering, within our lifetime — and I like to think we’re young — we should begin to see a difference,” Patterson said.

Still Lots of Bad Stuff In and Under the Water

As if to illustrate the point that you can find anything and everything in New York City, there’s a non-profit called the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy, which consists of scuba divers who examine and study underwater areas of greater New York Bay. The Times had a story about them in yesterday’s paper (which you might have seen – it is the most emailed story in the Times Metro section).

The group’s website, which is old and apparently in a very slow reconstruction phase, lists a bunch of places where they’re working, including Flushing Bay and the Bronx River, but the Times story was about the Gowanus Canal, in Brooklyn. It's a good reminder that as much as local waters have improved, they haven't improved that much:

Over the summer, the Department of Parks and Recreation contacted the group, which has only three paid staff members, to monitor an oyster restoration project in the East River. Restoring the population of oysters, which once flourished beneath the East River’s murky waves, could have a significant impact on cleaning up the river…

When Avra Cohen, 55, went into the Gowanus this past summer to collect samples from an unidentified microbial colony growing on the bottom, he wore a suit of vulcanized rubber, two pairs of gloves and a full face mask.

Mr. Cohen was inoculated against hepatitis A and tetanus. A friend suggested that he get vaccinated for typhoid, too. “And the doctor asked me where I was traveling,” Mr. Cohen said. “And I told him, ‘Brooklyn.’” …

The Gowanus is cleaner today than in previous decades, but still bedeviled by sewage overflow and runoff from local industrial plants. Biology students from the New York City College of Technology recently detected gonorrhea in a drop of water from the canal, according to Scienceline, a New York University publication. And scientists have yet to identify the microbes that Mr. Cohen collected, though they do know that they kill red blood cells….

He spent nearly an hour underwater taking photographs and video of the substrates — layers of clam shells — that the Parks Department had placed in the river to encourage oyster growth. He found old oyster shells that crumbled to dust in his fingers.

As for new spats, or young oysters, the prognosis was not good. “Maybe a few,” Mr. Cohen said, “but it wasn’t like a big plate of oysters waiting for me.”

Reviving oyster beds is a great idea. As Mark Kurlansky wrote in his book, The Big Oyster, there were once so many oysters in New York Bay, Raritan Bay, and the western third of Long Island Sound that they filtered all the water every three days. But that was long ago. As I wrote in my book, oil terminals in the city had already contaminated oyster beds in the far western end of the Sound by the 1880s. I know shellfish are doing well in some parts of the bay, and obviously in the Sound too. But the Gowanus Canal apparently isn't one of them, yet.

The Search for Leaking Power Cables Near Norwalk's Oyster Beds

If you're going to have seven large power cables running across the bottom of Long Island Sound, from Norwalk to Northport, they at least shouldn't leak insulating fluid. And if you're going to replace them, you ought to be careful of not damaging oyster beds. All that is happening in Norwalk Harbor now, assuming Northeast Utilities can actually find the cables. Story here.

Oysters Recovering, Jellyfish Arriving, and the Washington Post Explains the Sound's Problems to Us

You sort of get the idea that a newspaper story is going to be a crock when it begins with a dateline that says “Long Island Sound, Connecticut” and then goes on to describe lobster buoys as “winking” and global warming's effects on the Sound as somehow "controversial." But that’s how a Washington Post story about the Sound’s lobster die-off started this weekend. Read the whole thing here, if you have a taste for the overwritten and overwrought.

Meanwhile, oysters appear to be recovering in Greenwich Cove.

And with summer apparently lingering forever, have the stinging jellyfish arrived? In response to this post, a fellow named Bob Marra wrote:

I too am a regular swimmer in the Sound, enjoying Hammonasset for the 2.2 mile jetty-to-jetty swim. Have swum jelly-free all summer, until this weekend (6-7 October), when I got stung on both Saturday and Sunday. Sunday's stings are particularly bad, covering the major parts of both forearms with raised red welts. I'm wondering if it wasn't a blue bottle (Man-o'-war).

Oysters (and Bad Oldies Bands) Both Still Alive in Norwalk

Oysters seem to be rebounding nicely in Long Island Sound from two diseases, dermo and MSX (Multinucleated Sphere X – that’s an oyster disease, not a relative of Malcolm X): "

About two years ago they started coming back," she said. "We're on an upswing; we have a good supply of oysters again."

About 90 percent of the oyster population died off after Dermo and MSX wiped them out in 2000, according to state figures. David Carey, director of the Connecticut Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Aquaculture, confirmed the oyster supply in the state's waters is increasing.

"This industry is rebounding," he said. "Last year, the harvest numbers went from about 25,000 bushels to about 53,000 bushels."

This information, which is clearly good news, comes as the Norwalk Oyster Festival is about to open, here. The oyster festival features, among other things, live music by has-been bands. It also raises an interesting question: is it more amazing that the oysters are rebounding from two pernicious diseases or that Jay and the Americans apparently have been exhumed and are still singing?

Oysters and Clams, and Where to Find Them on the Sound

It's my impression that there's more interest in shellfishing on Long Island Sound than there has been in a while. Norwalk has always been an oystering center, and the Connecticut Department of Agriculture's aquaculture bureau has worked for decades to help shellfishermen and to improve shellfish beds. But I see more and more stories in the local papers that indicate a growing interest in shellfishing, which might indicate a growing confidence that shellfishing is a proper and safe activity in the Sound.

The folks in Madison, for example, are trying to expand the town's clam beds to make recreational shellfishing easier, which is a great idea, here. And a man who hails from a line of shellfishermen in Greenwich just got a license to harvest clams from the area near the Westchester County border, here.

Alissa Dragan at the Connecticut aquaculture bureau sent me some statistics about shellfish beds in Connecticut's part of the Sound. In 1985 there were 310,000 acres of shellfish beds approved form unconditional harvesting. The number fell to 243,000 in 1990, to 135,000 last year, and to 134,000 this year. Over the same period, the number of conditionally approved beds went from 6,000 acres to 136,000 acres (conditionally approved means the beds are open or closed for harvesting depending on the conditions and the quality of the water, which changes mainly with the weather -- heavy rains mean more bacteria). Here's how Alissa explained the change in the number of acres:

...keep in mind that these changes in acreage, from 1985 to 1990 and 1990 to 2006, do not necessarily correspond to degraded water quality, or conversely to improved water quality. In addition to water quality, there are several other factors that have impacted the classification of Connecticut’s shellfishing grounds over the years. Standards by which areas were classified became more stringent. From 1988 to 1990, shellfishing areas in several towns were downgraded to comply with new growing area requirements. In order to meet the FDA requirements in all 26 shoreline towns, areas had to be prioritized based upon shellfish harvest activity due to a shortage of manpower. Over the years sampling became more frequent, and sampling locations increased, resulting in the revision of growing area classifications in towns for which there previously were no data. The Bureau also conducted shoreline surveys to identify actual and potential pollution sources further contributing to redefining areas. It is more accurate to say the classification changes shown in this historic data are the result of improved knowledge about the areas and the factors influencing them, and a changing regulatory climate.

An Oyster Population is Revived By the Rain

The abundance of young, fingernail-sized oysters on New Hampshire is greater than at any time in a quarter century. Scientists think it’s because of heavy rains last May. It makes me wonder if some of the sub-estuaries of Long Island Sound were as lucky. Here’s an excerpt from the Boston Globe:

Baby oysters, millions of them, are fixed to the bay bottom in numbers not seen since scientists started tracking them almost 30 years ago. The discovery was made during underwater surveys in the fall. …

About 12 inches of rain fell over the May 14 weekend, followed by another 2.5 inches on June 7. All that fresh water washing into Great Bay may have given the baby oysters naturally spawned last year an important edge in a critical period of their development, Grout said.

Great Bay oysters produce millions of larval offspring each year, but almost all die in the first few months of life. Those that survive into the following winter are called a set, and this year's set is phenomenal, both men said.

All that rain water may have killed off predators, like green crabs, that eat baby oysters. It's also possible the fresh water kept the oysters from opening up and feeding for a few weeks last spring, thus making them less vulnerable at a critical time in their early lives, Grout said.

FERC Head Tells the Courant His Only Concern Is Safety

FERCin' Broadwater ... The Hartford Courant’s David Funkhouser traveled to Washington to interview Joseph T. Kelliher, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, about FERC’s role in the approval of the Broadwater liquefied natural gas plant in Long Island Sound.

Kelliher asks us to trust him that the only thing FERC is interested in is safety. And let’s face it, based on the cumulative record, why would we not trust the word and competence of a Bush Administration appointee? Here’s what Kelliher says:

"There seems to be a perception on the outside that we are actually balancing need vs. safety," he said. "That's completely untrue. ... When the commission looks at an LNG facility, we are not an economic regulator, we are a safety regulator, pure and simple."

But Dave helpfully points out in the next sentence that the FERC’s environmental impact statement for the Broadwater project went to great pains to deal not just with safety but to establish the need for the project:

… FERC's environmental report and other agency literature make clear that the agency believes such projects are needed, especially in the Northeast. Energy demand in the region is rising faster than generation capacity and the ability of the infrastructure to deliver that power.

Looking at the contrast between Kelliher’s statement and the plain language of the EIS, the word “disingenuous” comes to mind. That’s the charitable word, anyway.

Kelliher also says the giant LNG facility can’t be built unless New York State gives its approval on a handful of issues, a question that some people disagree with but which Connecticut Fund for the Environment thinks is right. The state must decide that the plant would be consistency with state policies for the coastal zone, and it must grant Broadwater an easement for the long-term use of the land at the bottom of the Sound. From the Courant:

The law did give FERC the authority to approve the siting of liquefied natural gas terminals. But, he said, "the state role in reviewing LNG import facilities is undiminished. ... There's more than one decision-maker. If we disapprove a project, it can't be built, but we're not the only body that has to approve an LNG facility."

Natural filters ... In Narragansett Bay, volunteers have been cultivating oysters in an attempt to revive the population. One of the hopes is that the population can eventually resume its traditional ecological function as a massive, natural filtration system. From the Providence Journal:

A single adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day and live up to 25 to 35 years if undisturbed, said Dale Leavitt, an assistant biology professor at Roger Williams University and the RI-ORGE founder and technical assistant.

“Fifty gallons of water a day, 365 days a year, thousands of oysters, they’re moving a lot of water,” Leavitt said.

Michelle J. Lee, a ProJo reporter who is also a fellow with the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, wrote the story.

Clean Water Fund ... Robert Miller of the Danbury News Times admirably outlines the issues facing Connecticut’s towns and cities as they try to upgrade their sewage treatment plants despite alack of money in the state’s Clean Water Fund.

Location, location ... Interested in knowing what the market value is of a one-acre island in the Thimble Islands? Mrs. Svenningsen knows. Hint: it’s not all that cheap.