Babylon beach to house up to six million shellfish in expanded nursery

Cedar Beach Marina’s shellfish nursery will expand sixfold this spring, when the Town of Babylon partners with Cornell Cooperative Extension to grow clams and expand Long Island’s bivalve population.

Since 1978, the town has been raising shellfish at the marina on floating trays seeded annually with one million baby clams and 200,000 baby oysters, according to Brian Zitani, the town waterways management supervisor.

In late spring or early summer, Cornell will build a nursery of floating upwellers, or clam incubators, and seed at least six million baby clams. Zitani said the current system is "extremely low tech."

“This would be an upgrade,” he said.

The six or more floating upweller systems — known in the industry as a FLUPSY — will hold one million seed clams each and be placed 20 to 30 feet from the shore.

The clam seed will be flushed with water propelled by small motors, pushing water with naturally occurring algae through the upwellers faster than the current method.

“You can put a lot more baby clams in a smaller area” with more fresh oxygenated water with algae, Zitani said.

Cornell will grow clam larvae in a hatchery, and bring the larger clam seed to the nursery to grow for several months, then release the clams in the bay in October, whether they’re the minimum size allowed or larger.

“The bigger you get them, the better chance they have of surviving,” Zitani said.

After one year, the town hopes to take over operations from Cornell, he added, which may start seeding oysters again as well.

“It would be an important location because it’s good quality water,” Lorne Brousseau, associate marine program director for Cornell Cooperative Extension, said of Cedar Beach Marina. “They’ve grown shellfish for many years and they have a good track record.”

A $5 million grant that Cornell got from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office to repopulate Long Island’s dwindled shellfish population will pay for the nursery and others like it, including in Mattituck Creek and Huntington Harbor.

“The goal is to keep the FLUPSYs there for many years to come,” Brousseau said.