Hatchery Wins State Grant
The State Department of Environmental Conservation announced $1.6 million in grants to East Hampton, Brookhaven, Islip, and Hempstead to expand and upgrade public shellfish hatcheries. The grants, announced yesterday, support Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s Long Island Shellfish Restoration initiative.
“Governor Cuomo is continuing to invest in New York’s natural assets to support our coastal communities and the ecosystems that they rely on,” Basil Seggos, the D.E.C. commissioner, said in a statement. “The public hatchery expansion grants and New York’s Shellfish Restoration Council will help re-establish these areas as prime coastal habitat and support much-needed upgrades to our shellfish hatcheries. These grants play a critical role in New York’s $10.4 million shellfish restoration effort to improve water quality and bolster Long Island’s coastal communities.”
The grants will provide each municipality with approximately $400,000 to improve existing hatcheries. Funded projects range from new or expanded water intake systems, algal culture systems, larval culture systems, broodstock conditioning, spawning and holding systems, setting tanks and systems, juvenile seed culture equipment and systems, and field grow-out systems for seed shellfish that are expected to yield approximately 12 million hard clam seed and 3 million oysters by 2019.
Municipal grant awardees will be obligated to supply a minimum of 15 percent of the yield associated with the hatchery expansion to one or more of five shellfish sanctuaries to be established on Long Island from 2020 to 2024.
The restoration of hard clams to Long Island’s coastal waters is expected to benefit the water quality of the area. As filter feeders, hard clams obtain their food by filtering microscopic organisms, mostly microalgae, from the water column. If concentrated heavily enough, adult hard clams have demonstrated the ability to filter brown tide algae. The restoration effort offers the potential, as water quality improves, to provide a more stable environment for additional clam growth and by extension the growth of the local shellfish economy.