NOTE: Ahead of the Summer 2021 season, Dr. Christopher Gobler, an ecologist at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, provided his annual “State of the Bays” address. Below is a media mention that followed as the season was underway.

— Filed by Carolyn Gusoff for CBS 2 New York

Sayville, NY, June 29, 2021 — It has become an annual sight off Long Island and it’s not getting any better.

Scientists say the waters are seeing one of the most intense brown tide algae blooms in years, CBS2’s Carolyn Gusoff reported Tuesday.

It’s back, and it’s bad.

Brown tide is muddying the waters of the Great South Bay. You can’t help but notice the unappealing cast on the otherwise beautiful view.

“The water appears to be very dirty,” one local resident said.

“It just looks like mud and it’s really killing the bunker fish. It’s taking the oxygen out of the water,” another said.

“It takes away from fishing. Everything that used to be in the bay is gone,” added Stanley Arthur of West Sayville.

Stony Brook University marine biologists say the Great South Bay is suffering from the most intense and widespread brown tide in four years. Counts of the algae that causes the brown color are nearly 10 times what’s considered harmful to marine line.

“Thirty five thousand cells-per-milliliter is the level that can begin to cause harm to, for example, clams, and we are at half a million cells-per-milliliter,” said Dr. Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook Coastal Ecology and Conservation.

That could spell the demise of this year’s young clam population. Bayman and marine scientist George Remmer said it’s not just the clams that have slipped away.

“I could catch half a bushel of flounder in there as a little boy off the bulkhead,'” Remmer said, adding when asked about the conditions now, “You couldn’t catch a flounder in this canal if your life depended on it.

“We are getting worse and worse blooms. We break records every few years,” he added.

Neil Sluiter, who tries to fish in the brown tide, blames lawn fertilizers that pour nitrogen into the bay.

“Everybody wants a green lawn and God forbid we should have a dandelion, because they don’t look good, so we have to kill them, too. At least that’s what people think,” Sluiter said.

“And we also know there are a lot of unsewered homes there, so on-site septic systems, nitrogen leaching into the bay, and that’s the combination that leads to these brown tides,” Gobler added.

While the blooms happen every year, the fact this year has been so intensified, it should be motivation, scientists said, to act even quicker.

Both Nassau and Suffolk counties offer grants to help people pay for upgrades to their cesspools so that they pollute less.


More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.