NY Sea Grant | Stewardship and You: Volunteer for Long Island Sound (April

Working Together in Spring 2019 to Restore and Protect the Sound

Contact:

Anna Weshner-Dunning, New York Sea Grant's Long Island Sound Study Outreach Coordinator, E: amw392@cornell.edu, P: 631-632-8730

Stony Brook, NY, April 10, 2019 - Long Island Sound is an estuary of national importance. This natural resource provides recreational fun for us, habitat for wildlife, and income to many local economies. However, the Sound is heavily affected by the 23 million people who live within 50 miles of the coastline.

We all must do our part to make sure we understand how our everyday actions affect Long Island Sound and protect it however we can. See below for upcoming volunteer events ...

Maya Fisher and Charlotte Preuss collected numerous cigarette butts around a bench at Bluff Point State Park, Groton, CT during a summer 2018 cleanup. Credit: Judy Benson / Connecticut Sea Grant.

Connecticut Volunteer Events

Mystic Aquarium

Earth Day Clean-up!

Sunday, April 28, 10:00am-2:00pm | Make a difference and join us at the Bluff Point State Park in Groton, CT. This family friendly event is open to conservationists of all ages, and the Aquarium will provide gloves and bags. No cost but registration is requested to ensure we have all the supplies needed for this event! Contact educationinfo@mysticaquarium.org to register today.

Long Island Sound Day Family Volunteer Days

Friday, May 24 & Saturday, May 25, 11:00am-3:00pm | Celebrate our local estuary in style! With the help of generous funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Long Island Sound Futures Fund, you and your family can enjoy hands-on activities, explore local watershed areas, create a craft and speak with visiting environmental organizations or attend a special program – and together learn more about our precious Long Island Sound. Visit mysticaquarium.org for registration details!

Project Limulus (horseshoe crab monitoring) - Sacred Heart University

Saturday, June 1, 10am-12:30pm | CT Audubon Society Coastal Center. 1 Milford Point Road, Milford, CT. Project Limulus Information talk, spawning survey, and tagging demonstration. For more information, contact Louise Crocco at lcrocco@ctaudubon.org

Saturday, June 15, 10am-12:30pm | CT Audubon Society Coastal Center. 1 Milford Point Rd. Milford, CT. Project Limulus Information talk, spawning survey, and tagging demonstration. For more information, contact Louise Crocco at lcrocco@ctaudubon.org

The Long Island Sound Mentor Teacher program (LISMT) program, now in its ninth year, provides teachers the opportunity to educate their peers and share successful classroom teaching strategies on issues that affect the health of Long Island Sound. Participating teachers pictured here from a fall 2019 workshop in Northport, Long Island, NY prepare water samples for testing. Credit: Ryan Strother/NYSG.

New York Volunteer Events

Garvies Point Museum & Preserve

The invasion of non-native plants (and animals) is a major problem all over the world. Learn how to identify non-native plant species and their native look-alikes, plus important invasive removal techniques. Volunteers are welcome at any time from 10am-2pm. We recommend volunteers bring work or garden gloves (we have some available), a hat, wear socks (to pull over pants), sneakers, light colored clothing, and a bag lunch with water if you desire. Water and light snacks will be provided.

Event Location: 50 Barry Drive, Glen Cove, New York 11542

- Garlic Weed Info Session | Saturday, April 27, 10am - 2pm
- Japanese Weed Knot Info Session | Saturday, May 18, 10am - 2pm
- Porcelain Berry Info Session | Saturday, June 8, 10am - 2pm

For more information and to RSVP please contact Veronica Natale at 516-571-8010 or vnatale@nassaucountyny.gov

Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor

- 2nd Annual Scudder’s Pond Cleanup | Saturday April 13 9am-11am

Where? Meet at the Shore Road entrance to the pond by the railing. Park at Tappen Beach or on Littleworth Lane.

What to bring? Work gloves; 3-pronged rakes or other tools for grabbing plastic, paper, and other debris; boots and long pants (strongly suggested). Garbage bags will be supplied.

For more information: https://coalitiontosavehempsteadharbor.org

Audubon New York

Many of our local beach-nesting birds are back so we need the help of volunteers and local community members to give birds a safe place to settle down and nest on the shores of the Sound this spring.

2019 Spring Events in May and June:

Tern Shelter Building
Saturday May 11, 10 am-noon | Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary, Oyster Bay, NY

Please help us build wooden “teepees” to provide shelter for common tern (NYS Threatened) and roseate tern (federally and NYS Endangered) chicks. Later, Audubon New York will deliver the shelters to Great Gull Island (a rocky island that’s part of a Long Island Sound Stewardship Area and Important Bird Area), which has the largest nesting concentration of roseate terns in the Western Hemisphere and the largest concentration of common terns in the world. This shelter building event will take place inside the Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary and Audubon Center in Oyster Bay. Please bring your own power drill if you have one. Also, we greatly appreciate donations of supplies ( ½” thick pressure-treated plywood, galvanized wood screws, and wooden tomato stakes) so that we can build additional shelters! For more information and to sign up please email NYcoast@audubon.org.

Great Gull Island

Trip #1 | Saturday June 1, 8am – 4pm (FULL, wait list available)
Trip #2 | Saturday June 8, 8am – 4pm

This trip is a unique opportunity to spend a day on Great Gull Island (GGI), a protected seabird colony that is located in the Long Island Sound off the coast of the North Fork and is owned and managed by the American Museum of Natural History. We will help protect the federally endangered roseate terns and the NYS threatened common terns that nest on the island by delivering the shelters that we will have built earlier in the spring. Then, GGI staff will teach us how to use GPS units and how to locate and mark common tern nests. We will spend most of the day searching for, marking, and mapping nests. There will also be an opportunity to get some photos of terns from the islands’ bird blinds. Because we have had high levels of interest in this program in the past, this year we added a second trip. For both days, we will meet at 8 am at the Orient by the Sea Marina in Orient, NY to take a boat to the island and will return around 4 pm. There is limited space on the boat, so volunteers will be accepted on a first come, first served basis. Volunteers must be at least 16 years old to attend. The first trip (June 1) is full but you can email NYcoast@audubon.org to join the wait list. To register for the June 8 trip, please fill out a registration form online: https://forms.gle/TNZ2YwANbtXiiZ349.

During a workshop held at Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, the attendees learned how to conduct a NOAA Marine Debris Shoreline Survey. With stakes to mark off survey areas, the teachers used checklists to classify the debris that was found washed up along the shoreline (seen above). They also learned how to teach students about marine debris through art by making decorative objects out of recycled debris. Credit: Amy Mandelbaum, NYSG/LISS.

Bronx River Alliance

- Saturday April 13, 10:30am-12:30pm | Water Quality Monitoring - New York Botanical Garden. Free. Registration required.

- Saturday, April 20, 10am-1pm | Family Eco Day-Join us for a family-friendly event to remove invasive species & plant natives along the river. Bronx River Forest. Free. Registration required.

- Monday, April 22, 10am-1pm | Earth Day-Volunteer to Plant Trees at Muskrat Cove Bronx, NY. Free. Registration required.

- Tuesday, April 23, 6pm-8pm | Uncovering the Watershed- Learn from historians about the original hydrology of the Bronx River, and much more. A Wade into the River lecture. NYC Parks The Arsenal, Bronx, NY.

- Friday - Mon, April 26-29 | City Nature Challenge Bronx River -Anytime. Find wildlife and share your observations using the iNaturalist app.

- Saturday, May 4, 10am-2pm | Bronx River Sweep. Become a river steward and help clean its banks. Free. Registration required. The Full River.

- Saturday, May 4, 10am-2pm | Foodway Tour: Edible Blossoms. Join a tour focused of the edible flowers of the Foodway. Free. Registration required. Concrete Plant Park Bronx, NY.

- Saturday, June 1, 10am-2pm | Family River Discovery Discover the underwater life of the river during the Great Fish Count. Family friendly. Youth must bring rain boots. Free. No registration required. Concrete Plant Park Bronx, NY.

- Saturday, June 8, 10am-2pm | Bike and Bird-Explore & identify bird habitats and species along the Bronx River Greenway by bike. Free. Registration required. Bronx Park East Bronx, NY.

- Saturday, June 8, 10am-2pm | Designing Resilient Gardens. Explore native plants and create climate adaptive gardens in this hands-on workshop at the Foodway. A Wade into the River event. Free. Registration required. Concrete Plant Park Bronx, NY.

- Saturday, June 22, 10am-2pm | Volunteer for the River. Help remove floatable debris from the river to improve its habitat as part of Project WASTE. Meet at Woodlawn Metro-North Station. Free. Registration required. Muskrat Cove Bronx, NY.

If your group would like to schedule a volunteer day, please email us at volunteer@bronxriver.org. Events are subject to change. For more info or register for events visit www.bronxriver.org/calendar or call (718) 430-4665 for latest details.

If your organization would like its volunteer event advertised in this volunteer e-newsletter, LISS' Volunteer Opportunities web page, or LISS' Facebook page, please send Anna Weshner-Dunning, Long Island Sound Study Outreach Coordinator, an email at amw392@cornell.edu.

More Info: Long Island Sound Study

Long Island Sound is one of the 28 nationally-designated estuaries under the NEP, which was established by Congress in 1987 to improve the quality of Long Island Sound and other places where rivers meet the sea.

The Long Island Sound Study, conducted under the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) National Estuary Program (NEP), is a cooperative effort between the EPA and the states of Connecticut and New York to restore and protect the Sound and its ecosystems.

For more on what you can do to make a difference, click over to the "Get Involved" or "Stewardship" sections of the Long Island Sound Study's Web site. News on the Long Island Sound Study can also be found in New York Sea Grant's related archives.

If you would like to receive Long Island Sound Study's newsletter, please visit their site's homepage and sign up for the "e-news/print newsletter" under the "Stay Connected" box.

For daily updates and tips on how you can help protect and restore Long Island Sound, please join LISS on Facebook, Twitter or, sign up for their RSS feeds.

More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 33 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly. Our program also produces an occasional e-newsletter,"NOAA Sea Grant's Social Media Review," via its blog, www.nyseagrant.org/blog.