Sound Environment

By Monica Pepe, Whale and Dolphin Conservation I recently attended a two-day workshop on Long Island on offshore wind development projects. You could say I was “blown away” (I’m a sucker for a good pun) by the number of people involved in the workshop – over 180! While we were primarily focusing on the wind farms planned for development off the coast of New York, there was a broad range of stakeholders in attendance. Most of the…

Mount Gay, the makers of the world’s oldest rum, is supporting Oceana, the largest international organization dedicated solely to ocean conservation, with the launch More Taste, Less Waste, a collaborative Mount Gay Rum x Oceana pledge campaign that promotes the reduction of single-use plastics as a means to advocate for the reduction of plastic use. Committed to lessening the impact of plastics while enjoying the ultra-premium rum, Mount Gay and Oceana are encouraging customers to take a…

By Nathan Frohling As an avid sailor of Long Island Sound, I have spent countless times on the water with family and friends. The Sound is one of the joys in life that I want to be able to count on. I want it to remain as I know and love it. If you are a sailor – or however you enjoy Long Island Sound – I bet you too care about being able to count on…

What happens when you spend all your time on the water and you witness firsthand the negative effects humans have on the ocean? It makes sense that you would do everything you could to solve those problems in any way imaginable. This is exactly what Harvey DeMovick IV, an 8th grader at Pine Point School in Stonington, CT, started doing at a very early age. Harvey’s been passionate about the ocean and all the marine life that…

By Bill Lucey, Long Island Soundkeeper Talk to Kaye Williams, founder of Captain’s Cove Seaport at Black Rock Harbor in Bridgeport, CT, and you’ll soon learn a few history lessons. Black Rock was the port used by George Washington’s spies as they rowed across Long Island Sound to Setauket, New York and back, bringing information on British troop movements. (This story was popularized by the Netflix series Turn.) Black Rock is an ideal harbor, long and narrow, protecting…

Especially in marine water, the unwanted accumulation of microorganisms, algae and animals on wetted surfaces can be costly if not attended to regularly. For recreational or commercial boaters, the danger of transferring non-native species is added to the increase in fuel consumption and maintenance cost. The navies of the world are not immune to this plague either. One study roughly calculated the cost of coating, cleaning and fouling on the United States Navy’s destroyers (class DDG-51) to reach $1 billion over 15 years!

Conservation efforts to protect marine mammals, especially large whales, continue to face great difficulties and, in some cases, have managed only marginal improvements. Most notably, only around 450 North Atlantic right whales survive today. Those that remain face serious human-induced threats such as vessel strikes, entanglement in fishing gear and habitat degradation.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) kicked off its Give a Sip campaign in May to support a bill introduced by Councilman Rafael Espinal that will eliminate the use of most single-use plastic straws in New York, NY.

That’s why New York State and the Mid-Atlantic region are moving full steam ahead with ocean planning. In 2013, the New York Department of State (DOS) finalized the Offshore Atlantic Ocean Study. Spanning from inshore waters to the edge of the continental shelf, this study compiled the most comprehensive dataset of physical, biological, geographic, and socioeconomic information available for the Atlantic Ocean waters offshore New York State.

Soundkeeper Bill Lucey at the helm of his patrol boat last year with Waterkeeper Alliance President Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and CFE/Save the Sound board member Kiki Kennedy, MD