A Proposal to the Stonalum Foundation to Fund Living Shoreline Implementation of Eastern Oysters, Atlantic Ribbed Mussels, and Saltmarsh Cordgrasses for Filtration and Erosion Prevention of Most Polluted Estuarine Marshes of Long Island Sound
Submitted by Kate Alexander, The Long Island Sound Living Shoreline Project
• The “Ask.” The Long Island Sound Living Shoreline Project respectfully requests that StonAlum foundation consider making a grant of $2,025,325 to support one-fourth the cost of our Shellfish Restoration Program which builds living shoreline to increase community and coastal habitat resilience for Long Island Sound.
• The Need. With the possibility of a global mean sea level rise of two meters or more by the end of the twenty first century, flooding and storm impacts on the Northeastern United States coast are of paramount concern for coastal communities and marine ecosystems. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused more than twenty billion dollars in damage, forcing New York City to formulate flood adaptation strategies like storm surge barriers and bio-engineering projects such as living shoreline to increase wetland resilience against storm surge. Living shorelines are nature-based stabilization projects implemented along shorelines using natural materials such as oysters, plants, and rocks to prevent coastal erosion, strengthen coastal community resilience, and enhance wildlife habitat health.
Sea level rise is accelerating and expected to continue due to climate change, threatening the sustainability of marshland with increased erosion rates along marsh edges. Intensifying storm impacts are predicted for coastal communities and marine habitats due to climate change effects coupled with sea level rise. Marshland along the northern region of Long Island Sound has low sediment availability and has not yet recovered from significant erosion caused by Superstorm Sandy. Both oyster reefs and marshes are natural wave barriers that help to combat storm surge. In fact, saltmarsh can absorb fifty percent of the wave energy it comes into contact with.
Nutrient loading, or excess nitrogen and phosphorus being pumped into water bodies, causes algal blooms, ocean acidification, and low oxygen saltwater conditions that lead to mass mortality of fish and other marine creatures as well as a change in marine plant diversity, disruption in the ocean food web, and health issues for coastal communities. Seventy six percent of the nitrogen loading into Long Island Sound originates from faulty septic systems. Long Island Sound is especially vulnerable to nutrient loading from rivers flowing into the Sound that cause eutrophication events and fish kills. Eutrophication is one of the most significant threats coastal ecosystems face and has the potential to cause ecosystem collapse. Marine ecosystems surrounding Long Island are currently under severe stress from nitrogen overloading and are possibly near or currently in the process of collapsing. Ecosystem collapse will lead to loss of wildlife biodiversity, have serious human health effects, and inevitably cause economic fisheries collapse.
In the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, Eastern oysters were plentiful in the Sound. Eastern Oysters and Atlantic Ribbed Mussels are native filter feeders of the Sound that prevent shoreline and marsh erosion as well as bioextraction of nitrogen and other harmful nutrients and contaminants, improving both water quality and ecosystem health. Just one adult Eastern oyster can filter fifty gallons of water per day. New York State has recently started farming shellfish to use as bio-extractors of harmful nutrients in the Sound, but the state is not currently growing enough shellfish to solve the vast nitrogen loading problem that the Sound is experiencing.
To help improve water quality, retain sediment, prevent erosion, create coastal community resilience, and support marine ecosystem health of Long Island Sound and its surroundings, we propose an ambitious resiliency plan of action, implementing bio-engineered living shorelines located along fringing saltmarshes in Long Island Sound’s most polluted estuarine habitats using Saltmarsh Cordgrass in combination with Atlantic Ribbed Mussel and Eastern Oyster beds. This will require validation that all restoration field sites are suitable for each species to thrive, acquisition of physical oysters, mussels, and cordgrass plants, relocation and planting of each species at field sites, enlisting volunteers to help regularly monitor environmental conditions at each site location for the duration of the project, and quantification of success of living shoreline species populations.
• “Why Us?” The Long Island Sound Living Shoreline Project is a startup nonprofit collaborating with New York Sea Grant, Connecticut Sea Grant, and the Long Island Sound Study to ensure coastal habitat resilience of Long Island Sound. We have partnered with some of Long Island Sound’s shellfish restoration veterans: Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County and the University of Connecticut Department of Marine Sciences for advisement regarding aquaculture and shellfish restoration best practices to ensure recruitment success of relocated Atlantic Ribbed Mussel spawn and success of spawn from the relocated adult Eastern oysters at each living shoreline application site.
Our organization closely collaborates with the Long Island Sound Study, a partnership and cooperative effort of scientists, researchers, organizations, citizens, and regulators working to increase ecosystem health in the Sound. Between 1998 and 2019, the Long Island Sound Study restored 2,056 acres of New York and Connecticut habitat in the Long Island Sound watershed. The Study works to remove nutrient loads and contaminants from both the Sound and its surrounding land to improve water quality through community workshops, committee meetings, conferences, events, work groups, and research studies on water quality improvement. Long Island Sound Study collaborates in these efforts with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, New York Sea Grant, and Connecticut Sea Grant.
Our nonprofit, the Long Island Sound Living Shoreline Project, also closely collaborates with New York Sea Grant and Connecticut Sea Grant. These two bodies have carried out and taken part in numerous long-term aquaculture research projects supporting both Long Island’s and southern Connecticut’s shellfish aquaculture industries. Both Sea Grants work with respected universities such including Stony Brook University and the University of Connecticut. Both universities are continually conducting complex marine shellfish research and restoration projects focused on cleansing of the Sound.
As a new nonprofit focusing specifically on living shoreline implementation, we appreciate the invaluable professional relationships our organization holds with local aquaculture and ecosystem restoration experts. The project staff positions will be filled with well-seasoned shellfish restoration practitioners local to Long Island Sound’s coast. The veteran shellfish restoration institutions listed above will act as our functioning advisors throughout the entirety of this project.
• PROJECT PLAN: Goal, Objectives, Strategies.
Goal. Increase community and coastal habitat resilience of Long Island Sound with shellfish and cordgrass restoration that will improve water quality, reducing storm surge, and decreasing future erosion of saltmarsh habitat from effects of sea level rise.
Objective 1. Monitoring environmental conditions to confirm location and appropriate conditions for project site areas in the summer months of the first year, before physical building begins to confirm suitability for oyster, cordgrass, and ribbed mussel species.
Strategy 1.1. Year 1. The team will quantify food availability for bivalve species at each location and identify potential areas of refuge from crab and other predatory species in each location. These parameters will help to confirm appropriate environmental conditions for living shoreline implementation.
Strategy 1.2. Year 1. The team will monitor water temperatures and other parameters that reflect oyster, ribbed mussel, and cordgrass health during the warm months of the first year of the project. These parameters will help to confirm appropriate environmental conditions for living shoreline implementation.
Strategy 1.3. Year 1. Quantify wave energy and risk of each of thirteen field sites. Only marsh sites with low-energy, low-risk, medium-energy, and medium-risk conditions will be approved.
Objective 2. Implement and build shellfish and cordgrass restoration living shoreline at mid intertidal elevations along estuarine fringing saltmarsh close to where each of these highly polluted water bodies connect to Long Island Sound: the Pawcatuck River (CT), Little Narragansett Bay (CT), the Thames River (CT), the Connecticut River (CT), New Haven Harbor (CT), the Housatonic River (CT), Bridgeport Harbor (CT), Norwalk Harbor (CT), Stamford Harbor (CT), the East River (NY), Manhasset Bay (NY), Hempstead Harbor (NY), and the Nissequogue River (NY). If environmental conditions of chosen habitats are found unsuitable for shellfish restoration at any of these locations, the project team will consider the following locations for replacement: Clinton Harbor (CT), Guilford Harbor (CT), Branford Harbor (CT), Milford Harbor (CT), the Pequonnock River (CT), Black Rock Harbor (CT), the Saugatuck River (CT), the Byram River (CT), Kirby Pond (NY), the Mamaroneck River (NY), Little Neck Bay (NY), Mill Neck Creek (NY), Oyster Bay (NY), Cold Spring Harbor (NY), Huntington Harbor (NY), Northport Bay (NY), Huntington Bay (NY), and Port Jefferson Harbor (NY).
Strategy 2.1. Years 1 to 3. Small pyramid-like structures will be built at each of thirteen locations for Eastern Oyster reef to attach to. In coordination with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Town of Islip’s Shellfish Hatchery, the Billion Oyster Project, the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School, and other hatcheries located in the New York and Connecticut state areas, a total of four million adult Eastern Oysters will be purchased, distributed equally among thirteen sites, and planted over a three year period.
Strategy 2.2. Years 1 to 3. The team will collect a total of roughly four million Atlantic Ribbed Mussel larvae from wild colonies within Long Island Sound’s saltmarshes during spawning periods and equally distribute and release the mussel larvae at each of thirteen fringing saltmarsh location on top of the oyster reef. Each year, more mussel larvae will be released at each site location during natural spawning periods.
Strategy 2.3. Years 1 to 3. A total of four million Saltmarsh Cordgrass plants will be purchased, equally distributed, and replanted at each fringing saltmarsh location over a three year period and placed amongst oyster and mussel beds as plant structures for mussels to attach to and grow off of. Each year, more cordgrass plants will be added to each site location.
Objective 3. Monitor and support health of implemented living shoreline at thirteen sites.
Strategy 3.1. Years 1 to 3. All parameters originally used to monitor habitat suitability before living shoreline implementation will be continually monitored weekly at each living shoreline field site during all three years of the project. The Shellfish Restoration Program team will train high school student volunteers in aquaculture and salt marsh habitat monitoring, teaching our youth to become environmental stewards of Long Island Sound. Our team will regularly host orientations and training sessions at high schools close to our field site locations, teaching students how to monitor living shoreline oyster, ribbed mussel, and cordgrass health. Students volunteering with the Billion Oyster Project as well as Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Northport Community FLUPSY Program and the Shellfish CARE Program will also be invited to take part in our Shellfish Restoration Program’s Monitoring Body, a group of trained volunteers monitoring our project sites for free to gain field experience. Our website will include an online database where volunteers will upload their collected field site data to provide open public access to all project data as well as full transparency of recent project successes and failures to better inform future attempters of living shoreline implementations in the future.
Strategy 3.2. Years 1 to 3. The team will quantify survival, growth, and reef size of Eastern Oysters and Ribbed Mussel recruitment at living shoreline field sites over the duration of this project. This will involve working with local and state government agencies, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations to follow, support, and build off of the 2015 Long Island Sound Study climate adaptation strategy to conserve coastal resilience of the Sound.
Strategy 3.3. Year 3. The duration of this project within the Long Island Sound Living Shoreline Project’s Shellfish Restoration Program will last three years. Inclusive management of shellfish restoration sites and cross-jurisdictionally inclusive and adaptive governance of those sites during and after project completion is an important part of the Long Island Sound Living Shoreline Project’s goal of increasing health and resiliency of the Sound. Open management of our project sites after project completion will be a continued collaboration between Connecticut Sea Grant and New York Sea Grant. If the project is a success and there is continued necessity for living shoreline in the Sound, at the end of the third and last year of the project we will prepare new project site locations and secure new funding to continue implementing living shoreline around the Sound.
• Budget.
• Measuring Success. Project success will be measured by quantifying oyster, ribbed mussel, and cordgrass recruitment and survival rates. A survival rate of 50% or more for adult Eastern Oysters will be considered a success. The same rate will be used for measuring success of cordgrass plantings. An Atlantic Ribbed Mussel recruitment rate of 25% or more will be considered a success. If three or two of the three planted species at each project site are dubbed a success, that site will be labeled as a success. If more than half of the project sites are deemed successful, the project will also be deemed as such. If, within the first year of implementation, sediment fills in around and/or near the living shoreline sites or the surrounding fringing saltmarsh, those sites will also be deemed successful. Success of the project will be measured after the first year of planning as well as for the second and third years, respectively. If sites are not predominantly successful for the first two years, but become successful by the end of the third year, the project will still be deemed an overall success.
• Conclusion. Eastern Oysters and Atlantic Ribbed Mussels are natural water filtration systems that have improved water quality and habitat health in marine ecosystems for millions of years. Long Island Sound saltmarsh is the native habitat for these bio-extractors that also act as natural storm surge barriers, protecting coastline from climate change effects like intensifying storm surge and sea level rise. With the finances to give this vital project wings, we can continue to restore Long Island Sound together to create a place where diverse fish populations thrive together, where people can swim and recreate without getting sick, and where saltmarsh will continue to largely exist in the decades to come.
