Volunteers gathered in Clinton on Wednesday with the goal of restoring more eelgrass to the Long Island Sound.
Their method was to glue eelgrass seeds onto clams. About 20,000 seeds were then put in the Long Island Sound so the clams can bury into the seafloor and plant the seeds.
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WATCH HEREGrowing more eelgrass will be beneficial to fish and improve the water quality.
“Eelgrass provides life for a lot of the species,” said Robert Vasiluth, from SAVE Environmental.
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SIGN UP He built a machine, similar to a conveyor belt, that drops the clams into the ocean and spreads them apart. Vasiluth said eelgrass “produces so much oxygen and then provides habitat for predators and prey to forage for foods and nursing areas for critical species. It's considered a critical fish habitat.”
“They [eelgrass] provide a lot of cover. They slow the wave action down. They prevent erosion. They clarify the water. These meadows are incredibly important habitats all over the planet. And they're shrinking everywhere,” said Bill Lucey, the Long Island Sound Keeper for Save the Sound.
The Long Island Sound has lost about 70% of the eelgrass habitat over the last few decades, according to Lucey, who said climate change and poor water quality were to blame.
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This method of gluing seeds to clams has been done in the fall, but Wednesday was the first time they were going to test it in the spring.
“Other methods aren't that successful and aren't scalable, and I decided I was going to build a machine that does this work,” Vasiluth said.
If it is successful, they hope to seed large areas and see the restoration of eelgrass to the Long Island Sound.
“If we could return this eelgrass, we could see rapid population increases in fish and shellfish,” said Vasiluth.
