South Shore Bays Unified Water Study Begins Monitoring In May

LONG ISLAND, NY — Last summer, there were more than 10 oxygen-deprived ‘dead zones’ in the South Shore bays and thousands of acres of bay bottom were closed to shellfishing. Moriches Bay was closed for months because of a gastrointestinal toxin that set worldwide records for density. Plus, a hazardous algae bloom that represented a new public health threat was detected from Islip to Quogue — a lethal toxin that had never been seen in Long Island waters before.

Like the waters to the north of the island, the waters to the south are in trouble.

So for the first time, a collaborative effort to monitor those waters will be launched in May. The pilot program is called the South Shore Bays Unified Water Study. The data collected will be used to create the first ever South Shore Bays Report Card, illustrating the ecological health of the bays in an easy-to-understand format.

It aims to do for the South Shore what Save the Sound has been doing on the North Shore — producing standardized water quality data for the whole region. Save the Sound’s 10th season of monitoring in the western Long Island Sound, in 2023, was their biggest yet.

Save the Great South Bay Executive Director Robyn Silvestri told Patch the South Shore bays need the kind of help that Save the Sound has been able to give the Long Island Sound by creating and getting funding for projects like one awarded last March — $749,976 for marine habitat restoration along 1,100 linear feet of shoreline in Udalls Cove.

Monitoring has already been on-going. However, various groups currently use different methods in bays stretching from Hempstead to Shinnecock, making it challenging to compare water quality across the South Shore Estuary Reserve and clearly show the extent of the problems.

"Understanding the significance of the scientific data actually is key to guiding efforts to restore and protect water quality," Silvestri said.

With monitoring set to begin in May, "We are in the process of site selection right now," she said.

The plan is to start with a double handful of monitoring stations including in Great Cove, Moriches Bay and at the mouth of the Connetquot River. The non-profit, including a new water quality scientist on staff and experts from the University of Connecticut among the project's advisors, is collaborating with monitoring groups with long expertise collecting data.

"We’re working with Cornell, the Suffolk County Health Department, Stony Brook," she said. "We are also collaborating with the town of Hempstead."

Save the Great South Bay was founded by residents — people who work and play on the water — who became concerned about the increasing ill-health of the South Shore.

“We remember what it was once like. We have been learning why the bay is sick, and what we can do to heal it,” they say on their website. “It’s our bay, our heritage — and our legacy.”