200,000 oysters might be released into the Great South Bay this summer, with your help

Andy Mirchel has coined a new term for a Long Island undersea creature — a Royster.

More than 100 volunteers are helping the nonprofit Save the Great South Bay to raise the so-called roysters with the goal of releasing more than 200,000 into the bay come September. The volunteers gather at docks between Amityville and Oakdale as well as Fire Island at set times each week this summer to care for the babies, which are growing in underwater milk crates tied to the docks.

Roysters — "you can trademark that one," jokes Mirchel, the Great South Bay’s Oyster Project director — are oysters whose job is to be "restoration" oysters. These oysters are not meant to become seafood dinners but rather to live out their adult lives being fruitful and multiplying. They are placed in areas where harvesting oysters is not permitted. The goal is to restore the Great South Bay’s water quality to how clean it was 40 years ago — oysters help to filter out the impurities caused by urbanization, Mirchel says.

"They’re grown for their ecosystem function, not to be plated," says Robyn Silvestri, executive director of Save The Great South Bay.

RINSE, COUNT, MEASURE

At the eight dockside "oyster garden" spots, volunteers nurture the oyster spat — flat brown baby oysters that look like skin moles that are attached randomly onto old mature oyster shells. Each oyster shell can host up to 60 or more spat attached to its front and back; each crate can hold dozens of oyster shells, and each of the dock sites hosts 10 to 20 crates, Mirchel says. By the end of the summer, each oyster shell will look like a softball-size clump of flourishing oysters. They’ll be released at four established "oyster sanctuaries" in the bay.

At Babylon Yacht Club in West Islip on a recent Monday afternoon, about a dozen volunteers and Save the Great South Bay staff pull the crates holding the oyster shell hosts from the water and monitor the oysters’ progress. Volunteers empty the milk crates into plastic laundry baskets and rinse any accumulated muck off the oyster shells. Then they choose five shells from each crate and count the number of spat on each of those shells. They also randomly measure five spat from each shell using digital calipers and record the growth on an app before returning the crates to the water.

"Once we start getting into the hotter weather, the growth starts to increase, and it becomes really important that we do this weekly monitoring," Mirchel says. "We want them to grow as well, as fast and as easily as possible."

Volunteer Earl Sandvik, 64, a retired union carpet layer from Babylon, grew up on the Great South Bay; his father was a tugboat captain. "These people are really, really trying to straighten out this mess that everybody on the Island caused," he says.

WATERWAY IS ‘PRECIOUS’

This is the fourth summer that Save The Great South Bay has been working with the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County Marine Program’s Oyster C.A.R.E Program, which stands for Community Aquaculture for Restoration and Education. The program helps Long Island community members and groups grow oysters in local bays or creeks. Cornell’s hatchery in Southold spawns the oysters for the first two to three weeks until the larvae become spat and are ready to be distributed to participants on the Island. The program has about 15 C.A.R.E. sites in all between the South and North shores of Long Island and lower Westchester County, says Peter Martin, shellfish restoration manager for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County. Save the Great South Bay is the biggest participant, Martin says.

Save The Great South Bay’s program has grown from eight crates at two docks the first year to the current 120 crates at eight sites in Amityville, Brightwaters, Bay Shore, West Islip, Oakdale, Saltaire, Ocean Beach and Ocean Bay Park, Silvestri says. They are working on adding a site in Patchogue. Save the Great South Bay pays $200 for each crate of oyster spat, raised through grants, fundraising and donations.

Donna Dragoni, 71, a retired teacher from Babylon, and her partner, Ron Marino, a semi-retired pediatrician, often help at Babylon Yacht Club. "I live right here in Babylon, so this waterway is quite precious," Dragoni says. "Oysters, once they’re grown, can filter 50 gallons of water a day."

Volunteer Lily Conaghan, 17, of Wantagh, is a senior in high school. "My mom found it online," she says of how she learned of the oyster volunteer opportunity. "I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do that.’ Why not? It’s nice out here."

Says Vincent Verderosa, 68, of Deer Park, semi-retired from making dentures: "It’s good to be a small part helping out."