Save the Sound Dispatch

  After more than fifteen years, Ryan Patrylak is ready to stop being unique. “I’d prefer everyone to clean up underwater,” he says. Ryan and his colleagues from SE Conn Skin Divers coordinate what’s believed to be the only Connecticut-based annual cleanup that collects trash not from beaches, parks and hiking trails but from the floor of Long Island Sound itself. On Sunday, September 21 they’ll be at it again, spending International Coastal Cleanup Day 2025 in…

On one side of a wooden picnic table, Adi Kolff leaned over a colorful poster depicting a busy harbor, with cartoon kayaks, sailboats, and powerboats sharing the water. More than a dozen campers hovered around the sides of the table, looking out from under the brims of their visors, baseball caps, and bucket hats. At their backs was another busy waterbody—a real one, where dozens of sailboats bobbed on their moorings on a hazy July morning.  …

By Kathryn Stamps and David Seigerman Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle Day (June 10) provides an annual opportunity to celebrate the smallest and rarest sea turtle in the world. Known for its heart-shaped shell and strong muscles, it is the second-most common sea turtle in New York, tending to arrive in Long Island Sound from Mexico or Texas during its juvenile or “coastal” stage of life. But the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle is a critically endangered species that…

We tend to see report cards as documents focused only on the past. But the 2025 Long Island Sound Beach Report, released by Save the Sound just before Memorial Day Weekend, is as much about the future. Yes, the biennial Beach Report presents water quality grades from recent swimming seasons—2022 through 2024, in this case. It evaluates how water samples collected at roughly 200 public and private beaches around the Sound performed against state safe swimming standards…

It’s more of a red teardrop, actually, plotted almost exactly on a dot-and-dashed line that splits Cold Spring Harbor in half, the Town of Huntington in Suffolk County, NY on one side, the Town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County on the other. The story this spot tells is the water quality history of monitoring station FB-1, location at 40.87277778 degrees latitude, -73.47361111 longitude. In a few clicks, you can find the results of a few hundred…

By Lindsay Skedgell     Hanover Pond in Meriden, CT was peaceful that Saturday morning, the last full day of Summer 2024, as volunteers from across the state peeked under brush and along trails to pick up trash that had been discarded in the weeds or the tree roots. With trash grabbers and gloves, they eyed each trail, hiked down slopes, sifted through piles of leaves, and held conversations about their lives, what brought them to a…

At first glance, there’s nothing even remotely intimidating about the QuantStudio 3. It presents as a humble white cube, easily mistaken for a stocky old school photo printer with a display that looks surprisingly like the screen on the seatback in front of you on your last flight. Its only off-putting trait may be its inability to recognize a caret (the ^ character above the 6 on your standard QWERTY keyboard) when you’re trying to enter the…

By Killian Duborg, Connecticut communications specialist   As a new Congress and state legislative sessions start, it’s more important than ever that we are all conscientious consumers of information. With energy issues high on the agenda, you will likely hear a variety of perspectives. Unfortunately, misinformation spreads easily, even among well-meaning individuals. One topic particularly prone to myths and misunderstandings is offshore wind energy. Well-sited offshore wind is a safe, proven, reliable, and cost-effective energy solution that’s…

Find out in the 2024 Long Island Sound Report Card   How’s the water? It’s the question Save the Sound’s staff are asked more than any other. And it’s one that requires a nuanced answer, depending on what “water” you’re talking about. The 2024 Long Island Sound Report Card, which we released on October 10 at multiple press events across the region, provides answers about the ecological health of the Sound, evaluating how well the water can…

  On the Monday following the long Fourth of July weekend, New York State Assemblymember Fred Thiele took his turn at the podium, flanked by an assembly of unlikely allies. He was addressing a bill that he’d sponsored in Albany—the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act—which had already passed the state and county legislatures, been signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, and minutes later would be signed into law by Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine. It was the…