Cornell Cooperative's Shellfish Program Gets Underway

Employees and volunteers from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County’s Southold Project in Aquaculture Training were out on the Moriches Bay doing their part to supply the waters off Southampton and Southold with shellfish last week.

Last Tuesday and Wednesday, volunteers, including ones from the Barrier Beach Preservation Association of West Hampton Dunes, began the process of recovering oysters from oyster garden sanctuaries that are housed in the volunteers' backyards.

Once gathered, the oysters were placed in Moriches Bay to spawn.

According to Gina Mulhearn, program coordinator for Cornell, the gardens are incredibly efficient in keeping the scallops healthy, protected and in close proximity to spawn and produce millions of offspring.

Mulhern explained that the garden program, which started four years ago, has already resulted in the production of 8 million oysters, clams and scallops each year.

The Oyster program is part of the 11-year-old Southold Project in Aquaculture Training, which is aimed at encouraging community members to become stewards of their environment and to restore the shellfish to the bays by helping to maintain a hatchery and nursery called the Spat Shack.

To date, Cornell says over 400 people have taken part in the garden program that also offers monthly workshops, shellfish seed and tools to create shellfish gardens in their own waterfronts or at the Cornell’s community garden.

Volunteers are permitted to harvest half the shellfish they produce.

This season, Mulhern said nearly 7,000 mature oysters were placed in the bay by the families of West Hampton Dunes.

“This will produce a huge plume of new oyster’s spawn into Moriches Bays,” she said.

Other oysters and shellfish will be placed in area waters at later dates from two other programs on the South shore, including those run by volunteers from the Sag Harbor Oyster Club and the town of Southampton’s Parks Department summer program, which is open to the public to participate in at the Annex at Tiana Beach in Hampton Bays.

Cornell Cooperative also runs a horseshoe crab program in the area. For more information, click here