Board approves two sites for Oyster Keepers: State approval still needed 

The Town Board Monday night agreed to execute a letter of permission that would give the group known as Oyster Keepers two sites to situate reefs in Menantic Creek and Dickerson Creek.

If the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation approves, the group would have 3,000 square feet of underwater land in each creek for the purpose of oyster reef restoration and ecological enhancements.  

The original request the Oyster Keepers made was to plant one million oysters on reefs in Menantic Creek, but the group was asked to present a letter of support from Cornell Cooperative Extension, which had just gained Town Board approval for its Back to the Bays reefs in Menantic Creek.

The concern among Board members was that what the Oyster Keepers were originally proposing could too near to the Cornell reefs and could compromise data from that effort.

When the Oyster Keepers couldn’t gain support from Cornell Cooperative Extension staff, group leader Arel English returned to the Town Board with some alternative sites.

Assuming the DEC approves the two sites in Monday night’s Board resolution, the Oyster Keepers now have Town permission for alternative sites in Menantic and Dickerson creek sites without further delay. 

Mr.  English had outlined plans in June to expand the Oyster Keepers’ reefs he said have been “incredibly successful” and “the fastest growing” at the Hagar Road Peninsula.

An email from Chelsea Miller at the DEC declared that the distance for a new oyster reef in Menantic Creek needs be at least 50 meters from the boundaries of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Back to the Bays reefs.

“If you hear anything more from Kate [Rossi-Snook] and Kimberly [Barbour] at Back to the Bays , it would be ideal to have open communication with Back to the Bays to create the most effective grouping of oyster reefs within Menantic Creek,” Ms. Miller wrote in her email.

Cornell Cooperative Extension officials opted not to comment on the situation at this time.

Mr. English told the Town Board this month he was asking for DEC assistance in identifying alternative locations to his original request to expand plantings where the Oyster Keepers have previously placed their original reefs.

What contributed to their success, Mr. English said, was tons of food and warm water.

“That’s what oysters want,” he said.

The Oyster Keepers’ goal was to extend the area where the group has had success with an eye to restore the oyster population to the historical levels that were once present in the area, Mr. English said. He wanted to create spat on shells as Cornell Cooperative has been doing, but on a “much bigger scale.”

He pointed to the success Stony Brook University has had between 2012 and 2019 restoring the clam population in Shinnecock Bay as “kind of a north star for us” in working to increase oysters.

The Shinnecock Bay project involved 3.2 million clams planted that dramatically increased the overall population by filtering the water over a three-month period to what dropped to a rate of every 10 days and now is at filtering every three days, Mr. English said.

Where the clams were planted, it led to a complete eradication of brown tides and eelgrass dramatically increased and continues to increase, he said.

The group’s current goal is to plant a million oysters he said will filter 50 gallons of water a day under ideal conditions. That will reduce nitrogen levels by 150 to 300 kilograms, he said.

Besides reducing nitrogen, Mr. English predicted the oyster population will remove a lot of algae from the water.

The Oyster Keepers have worked with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Cornell Cooperative Extension and Stony Brook University, Mr. English said about expanding the reefs in the area where its original plantings occurred.

“We just want to build on all of that work,” he said about the Oyster Keepers’ reefs planted three years ago.