Oyster Bay, nonprofit team up to highlight the benefits of kelp farming 

A new batch of sugar kelp is growing, suspended on hemp lines hanging a few feet below the surface of the water along Oyster Bay Harbor at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park.

As it grows over the winter, the algae will improve water quality and serve as a learning tool for students before being harvested and spread across town soil. 

The seaweed — adept at filtering harmful nitrogen out of the water — will be part of a project run by the Grenville Baker Boys & Girls Club, a Locust Valley nonprofit, that connects high school students with firsthand environmental work. The Town of Oyster Bay loaned the group three marina slips at the park for the effort, which begins Jan. 17 and runs into the spring.

Over the next few months, a group of about a dozen high school students in the club will meet at the park to take observations of the kelp: measurements like salinity level and the temperature of its environment.

Once the kelp grows from tiny spores to waving brown seaweed, it’ll be harvested and used to improve soil on town properties, said Dave Gugerty, a club volunteer who helps run the sugar kelp program.

“We teach the children about climate change, global warming and how this is one small effort to sequester some carbon,” said Gugerty, who is also a state Supreme Court justice. He runs the program alongside Leo Imperial, another volunteer for the club.

The sugar kelp thrives in cold water and can grow up to 4 to 5 feet before it’s harvested later this year, according to Gugerty. After it’s emulsified, it is used as a “soil amendment” and can serve as a natural replacement to chemical fertilizers.

This is the first time the program is being held off the coast of the hamlet of Oyster Bay. In past years, the group harvested kelp in Bayville and placed it on the village’s rain gardens.

Moving from the water to a next-level use helps teach the students how “road runoff going into a rain garden as opposed to our bays and creeks is preferable,” Gugerty said. “It’s a beautiful, cyclical thing to teach the children." 

The town grows its own sugar kelp in Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park and Tappen Beach marinas, according to Brian Nevin, a town spokesman. He said nine spools of kelp were purchased this year for a total of 1,350 feet of kelp line.

Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino called the Grenville Baker Boys & Girls Club program a “unique and educational opportunity to local youth.”

Stephanie Urio, Grenville’s director of programs and professional development, said the nonprofit serves about 250 children on a daily basis and that a subgroup of about 15 students, called “Keystone,” will handle the kelp farming project.

Because the project is a longer-term commitment than a single day of environmental stewardship, Urio said the kelp farming initiative is “helpful for them seeing something bigger than themselves and connecting to some of the ways that they can benefit the environment.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service said sugar kelp can live three to four years and grow up to 16 feet. Uses range from biofuel to food, according to NOAA.

Wendy Moore, executive director of Lazy Point Farms, an organization that works to help kelp farmers establish and run their own programs, said she has seen interest in sea kelp grow on Long Island, both from individual growers and municipalities.

The Town of Huntington worked with a nonprofit earlier this year to plant sugar kelp in its harbors, Newsday reported, and Moore said she hopes to see other governments use kelp as a natural alternative to synthetic fertilizers.

“The goal is to get seaweed in the conversation for Long Island,” Moore said. “We want to see them thrive and flourish and see it be a part of the local economy.”

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ