The Suffolk County Aquaculture Lease Board will hold an in-person meeting on Monday at 5 p.m. in the first-floor conference room at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Education Center in Riverhead, during which seven applications received as part of this year’s lease application cycle will be discussed. Several of the applications are for leases in East Hampton and Southampton Town waters, although recreational boaters and yacht clubs aren’t entirely pleased.
Staff from the Department of Economic Development and Planning, which administers the Shellfish Aquaculture Lease Program in Peconic Bay and Gardiner’s Bay, will present to the board the sites that are proposed for leasing, as well as any written comments that were received during a 60-day public comment period. Members of the public will also have an opportunity to comment on the sites that are proposed for leasing.
Three applications were submitted by aspiring new shellfish farmers, each seeking one 10-acre lease. Three more were submitted by current leaseholders seeking a second 10-acre lease, and one was submitted by a current leaseholder seeking to relocate an existing lease.
“There are three basic sites in East Hampton where there are clusters of potential 10-acre leases,” John Aldred of the East Hampton Town Trustees told his colleagues on Monday. “One is in Promised Land, one is in Northwest Harbor up by Cedar Point Park, and one is on the west side of Gardiner’s Island.”
One applicant for a new lease, Polifarms L.L.C., plans an off-bottom aquaculture operation at one of three lease sites in Napeague Bay. Another, Olas Oysters Inc., plans an off-bottom operation in Northwest Harbor, Noyac Bay, or Majors Harbor in Shelter Island Town. Weird Fishes Shellfish Co., the third new applicant, plans an on and off-bottom aquaculture operation in one of three lease sites in Little Peconic Bay or Great Peconic Bay.
The Montauk Shellfish Company, an existing leaseholder, seeks a second 10-acre lease site for an on and off-bottom operation in Northwest Harbor. It also seeks to relocate an existing site to Northwest Harbor. Two other existing leaseholders, Tardif Aquaculture and Davy Jones Landing, each seek a second lease site for operations in Southold Town, the former in Hog Neck Bay and the latter in Great Peconic Bay or Cutchogue Harbor.
Bivalves, including oysters, are filter-feeding shellfish. One oyster can filter as many as 50 gallons of water per day, and bivalves can mitigate harmful overloading of nitrogen and phosphorus and algal blooms by eliminating excess nutrients from the water.
But the lease program has proven controversial on the East End, with some waterways users at odds with shellfish farmers over the use of Peconic and Gardiner’s Bays. Throughout the initial 10-year review, yacht clubs complained about floating oyster gear, calling it a navigational hazard. Many shellfish growers, however, say that suspending gear high in the water makes for significantly greater productivity.
In response, legislators adopted a new cultivation zone map and established a lease review board that includes a representative of each of the five East End towns.
Sarah Lansdale, the county’s commissioner of economic development and planning, said in a notice for Monday’s meeting that Thomas Ralicky of the Economic Development and Planning Department can be called with questions at 631-853-4865. The Cornell Cooperative Extension Education Center is at 423 Griffing Avenue in Riverhead.
