Taking Care of the Clams

By Erik Holm
STAFF WRITER

October 22, 2002

The 11,000 acres of Great South Bay bottomlands that were transferred yesterday to the Nature Conservancy likely will stay in the environmental group's hands only for about three years, the executive director of the Conservancy's Long Island program said yesterday.

That's the estimated time frame that the Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit and its growing list of partners in the project estimate they will need to come to a consensus on how the bottomlands - the muddy floor of the bay that had been owned by the Bluepoints Co. for nearly a century - should be managed.

After that, the vast tract of land which makes up about a third of the floor of the Great South Bay likely will be transferred to either the state or to the Town of Brookhaven.

"I am confident that the state, or Brookhaven, if they have the will to do so, would easily be in position to take care of property," said Paul Rabinovitch, head of the conservancy's Long Island program.

The contract that the group signed with Bluepoints' parent company, First Republic Corp. of America, calls for the environmental group to enlist several partners to determine the best use for the land, and then abide by the consensus of this planning group.

Those partners so far include SUNY Stony Brook's Marine Sciences Research Center, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Brookhaven, and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, among others. Rabinovitch said yesterday that they also plan to include the baymen who harvest shellfish off the floor of the bay in the process.

For nearly a century, the Bluepoints Co. held exclusive rights to the land between Bayport and Heckscher State Park and across to Fire Island, as other shellfish harvesters plied their trade on either side of its exclusive preserve.

But in recent decades, Bluepoints curtailed its harvesting program, and most of the local baymen gave up the business, as the population of clams and oysters in the bay plummeted.

Bluepoints' parent company left out about 1,500 acres of bottomlands, which it still uses to grow oysters, from the deal with the conservancy.

The rest, valued at about $2 million, will be used for a combination of purposes, said Bill Wise, the chairman of the planning group and associate director of Stony Brook's Marine Sciences Research Center. Those uses would include areas for public shellfishing, the study of commercial aquaculture, a natural preserve, and an area set aside for environmental research and educational projects.

The waters of the bay above the land are not included in the deal; they have always been public waters and will still be available for boaters and fishermen.
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