Conscience Point Shellfish Hatchery Provides Tools To Clean The Water, And A Local Delicacy

Housed in a modest wood building at the edge of North Sea Harbor, Conscience Point Shellfish (CPS) offers East Enders a rare opportunity to save the world while savoring one of the area’s most prized delicacies.

Founded in 2013 on property owned by the Southampton History Museum, the nonprofit’s primary mission is to advance the town’s long maritime history by promoting sustainable aquaculture and ecological stewardship of local waters.

Southampton’s bays and harbors lie smack in the middle of the Peconic Estuary System, comprising nearly 300,000 acres of water, land and marshes between Long Island’s North and South forks. Those waters serve as nursery, habitat and dining hall for species ranging from mussels and fiddler crabs to ospreys and sea turtles. They also put tons of seafood — including flounder, weakfish, porgies and bass — on the tables of homes and restaurants.

A key cog in the machinery that keeps all of this in balance is the lowly shellfish. Oysters and clams may not possess the majesty of a soaring osprey, but their role in maintaining the health of the local waters can’t be overstated. Filter feeders, they eat by drawing water into their bodies and extracting algae and other nutrients from it while it passes through. Nestled quietly in the sand, one single oyster can filter 30 gallons of water per day.

Without an adequate population of these filter feeders, algae can get out of control, throwing off the entire ecosystem and leading to die-offs up the food chain. Additionally, pollution from fertilizers, sewage and other chemicals being washed into the waterways add to the overgrowth of algae.

CPS has been on a mission to ensure the vital population of shellfish is strong enough to do its job keeping the waterways clean. Ashley Oliver, one of the nonprofit’s three part-time employees, explained that the organization gets larval oysters each spring, donated from the Town of East Hampton’s shellfish hatchery. The number varies, depending on how successful East Hampton’s spring spawning season is. The organization also gets donations of larval clams, which are also raised and then seeded into the bay, although not harvested for sale by CPS.

In addition to donations of young mollusks, the organization has also been buoyed by several local businesses, including Buzz Chew Chevrolet-Cadillac, which donated a truck; Ocean Electric; Mahoney Plumbing; Nugent and Potter and Liberty Iron

Ms. Oliver, along with her co-workers Tess Mahoney and Scott Healey, manage the complex process of growing the shellfish from newly hatched to ready-for-life-in-the-bay in the facility’s lab.

The baby shellfish, barely visible to the naked eye, are poured into 100-gallon conicals, cone-shaped tanks, of which the hatchery has four.

“They swim for about the first two weeks of their life,” explained Ms. Oliver. “Then they set, which is when they get their shell and sink to the bottom.”

At that point, the oysters and clams, now doubled in size, are moved into set tanks, where, she said, “they can be inside for another couple of months, as long as you have enough algae for them. But once they start to require more food than we can produce for them, we put them out in the bay where they have an unlimited supply.

“For example,” she continued, “we have two 100-gallon tanks of baby oysters and one tank of baby clams. Let’s say you feed a tank 30 liters of algae one day, and you come back the next day and the water is crystal clear again, meaning they’ve eaten all the algae. That’s when you know they’re really starting to ramp up and they need to be outside.”

Once the bay warms up to 50 degrees, the clams and oysters, by now about the size of peanut M&Ms, are loaded into baskets and placed just offshore in Long Island’s first solar-powered Floating Upweller System, or FLUPSY.

Water is pumped up from beneath the FLUPSY and through the baskets, providing the young oysters with a steady supply of nutrient-rich algae. The oysters grow much more quickly than in natural conditions, because circulating water provides a constant supply of food and oxygen.

After a few more weeks of growth, the oysters are transferred to bags and placed in floating cages, where they sit just beneath the surface of the bay, filtering algae and growing steadily. Every two weeks, each cage is brought to the surface and the bags are changed to ensure that dirt doesn’t hinder the free flow of water in and out of the bags.

In the winter, the pontoons that float the cages are filled with water and the cages are sunk to the bottom, where the oysters hibernate.

By the following summer, the oysters are removed from the cages. Some are harvested and end up on the tables of members of the Conscience Point Shellfish CSA. The rest are donated to the Southampton Town Trustees, who seed them around the bay so they can keep the waterways clean.

Charlie Schuster, who first joined the CSA last year, said he values his membership for a couple of reasons: “Oysters are an integral part of the bay ecosystem, and we need a healthy population of oysters, primarily. Secondarily, I like to eat oysters.”

CSA memberships are available at three different levels, ranging from $130 for 100 oysters to $300 for 300 oysters over the course of the summer season. Members can buy more at the same price per oyster, and they can be delivered, or members can pick them up and even get a tour of the hatchery.

For more information about the hatchery and joining the CSA, visit https://consciencepointshellfish.org.