Recently, Supervisor Dan Panico and Councilman Neil Foley made a trip out of the Sandspit Marina in Patchogue to the Town of Brookhaven’s Shellfish Survey area in the Great South Bay. The Town’s department of Planning and Environmental Protection is responsible for managing the shellfish in the bay and uses the information gathered as a tool to determine the progress of the Town programs and natural processes.
This year the Town of Brookhaven Parks Department provided the equipment to perform the sampling and the Department of Planning and Environmental provided the data collection and analysis regarding population densities, sediment types and species compositions. The Shellfish Survey takes approximately 10 days to complete.
Oysters are masters of filtering murky water and by drastically increasing their populations in the Great South Bay, the Town can mitigate damage being done to our water quality by outdated septic systems.
Credit: Town of Brookhaven