There’s new hope for old problems in Long Island Sound

Seaweed has long been hailed as a superfood packed with vitamins, minerals and essential amino acids. It is an ingredient in many smoothies, and a staple in some Asian cuisines.

Of course, swimmers may be put off by the often-slimy vegetation, but hey, nothing is perfect.

Local swimmers may be encouraged, however, by one of the newer beneficial uses found for seaweed: cleaning the world’s oceans and other salt water bodies, including Long Island Sound.

The state earlier this week awarded Stamford-based SoundWaters a $200,000 grant to create seaweed farms in the waters off Greenwich and Stamford. The well-respected environmental group is teaming with the Yarish Seaweed Marine Biotechnology Lab at University of Connecticut Stamford to plant the first farm in Greenwich waters this winter. Next year it will add a similar plot in Stamford, according to Leigh Shemitz, longtime president of SoundWaters.

“UConn is going to handle all the science. And we at SoundWaters are all about student and public engagement. This is a really exciting project and it really changes the paradigm,” Shemitz

said, her enthusiasm and excitement clearly evident in her voice. “We, along with many other strong advocates, have worked hard for at least 30 years to remove nitrogen from Long Island Sound, and we’ve been pretty successful. But with seaweed farms, we can make the situation better, not just less worse.”

Long Island Sound is a seriously stressed marine ecosystem. More than 23 million people live within 50 miles of the Sound, providing a constant flush of nitrogen and phosphates. The Sound is downstream of a huge watershed that includes six states, two countries, and the Housatonic, Naugatuck and Connecticut rivers, where for years the industries that drove the region’s economy also dumped metals and other toxins into the waterways. And, for such a large body of water, there is relatively little water flow, particularly at the western edge where it narrows considerably.

“All that makes the Greenwich and Stamford area an ideal spot to really study the effects of seaweed on water quality,” Shemitz said. “Charlie Yarish (after whom the UConn lab is named) is one of the foremost experts in the world, and has advocated for years for seaweed as a way to clean the oceans. The farm will provide a way to measure exactly how much nitrogen is being extracted.”

Seaweed feeds on nitrogen and, also, like all plants, consumes carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Right now, sugar kelp is growing in land-based, salt water tanks. Once it gets to a certain size, the kelp, which is a rubbery brown plant that looks like a sheet of lasagna, will be transplanted to the farm site just south of Little Captain’s Island. A rope suspended from anchored buoys serves as the farm infrastructure. The sugar kelp will be strung on the rope, similar to grapes in a vineyard. It is harvested in winter.

In addition to removing nitrogen, seaweed farms have great potential to increase the shellfish harvest in Long Island Sound. The seaweed hangs just below the water surface, dangling above the shellfish growing in the seabed. It seems to be a truly symbiotic relationship. There are reports of one shell fisherman in New Haven who harvested 30 tons of kelp and 250,000 oysters, mussels and clams from just one acre. That is a lot of kelp burgers (yes, those are a thing).

This is truly good news for Long Island Sound, but this week also included further confirmation that coastal towns such as Greenwich have a long way to go to clean up their rivers and streams that eventually flow into the Sound. Westport-based Harbor Watch found that water tested from 20 rivers and streams exceeded acceptable levels of bacteria 77 percent of the time. That is the criteria used by the state to close beaches.

Harbor Watch reported that Greenwich’s Horseneck Brook failed the test 86 percent of the time; the North Mianus River, backup water supply for much of town, had higher than acceptable test results in 45 percent of the tests taken.

Harbor Watch’s results were confirmed by Save the Sound, a second environmental group, which conducted its own tests. Failing septic tanks, leaking sewer lines and illegal discharges are the leading causes of the polluted waterways. Unfortunately, this is not new news.

It is a continuation of a troubling trend that continues to go unaddressed. Greenwich, and other towns, need to develop better inspection and enforcement protocols to make property owners maintain septic fields, and repair areas of the town’s drainage system where storm water mixes with sewage during heavy rainstorms.

And, North Mianus has the newest sewer system in town. Why are the test results in the Mianus River still poor? One would think the Health Department might want to know.