Ed Warner pushes his boat off a sliver of Long Island waterfront that’s been in his family since the 1800s. He is the fifth generation of Warner baymen – the locals’ term for fisherman – to head out to eastern Shinnecock Bay in search of Mercenaria mercenaria, the hard clam.
“Clamming and fishing, they’re in your blood,” says Warner, as Hampton Bays, a coastal village in Southampton, New York, fades into the distance. “It’s a lifestyle, not a job.”
That lifestyle – and Long Island’s coastal ecosystem, economy and culture – have been threatened since the 1970s by increasing degradation in the quality of Long Island’s water. Cornell Cooperative Extension aims to change that, by leading the largest effort ever to restore Long Island’s shellfish populations.
Read the rest of this story at:
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/09/ripple-effect-cornell-helps-restore-long-islands-shellfish