WFSB Eyewitness News 3
By Luke Hajdasz and Zoe Strothers
STONINGTON, Conn. (WFSB) – In Stonington, there are unique plans place to clean up the water and eventually restore shellfish.
Wequetequock Cove is great for a day on the boat, but if you look closely, the water may not be so inviting. It has a muddy bottom and is full of jellyfish instead of shellfish.
“When I was a kid, the bottom was sandy. There were oysters, eels, fish, including little flounder. The water was clear,” said Paul Goetz, Owner, Stonington Marina.
Although it is safe to be in, Wequetequock Cove is not as healthy as it once was.
“This cove used to have an awesome oyster population, and shellfish. It’s important we restore the habitat,” said Dan Mullins, Executive Director, Eastern CT Conservation District.
Paul Goetz owns Stonington Marina on the cove. He says restoring the water quality starts on land.
Goetz is composting fish to use as natural fertilizer in nearby garden beds. He fills a barrel with fish compost and mixes it with sawdust to create the fertilizer.
“If it doesn’t come from here, it shouldn’t go back in here. So, if you catch a fish at Block Island or Montauk, you don’t want to throw it in the cove and add nutrients that weren’t originally present,” said Goetz.
“It stops the runoff from entering the cove and entering nutrients into the cove,” said Mullins.
Natural fertilizer would work on your own yard too. It keeps chemicals out of the water that can lead to algae blooms, something Wequetequock Cove is no stranger to.
“Too much nitrogen in a salt water system and you get algae blooms, which is very detrimental to water quality,” Mullins said.
There are small algae blooms out near Sandy Point that likely came from a place like Wequetequock Cove.
“While many people may not know that those blooms affect them, they eventually float out into Little Narragansett Bay and reach places we all love and cherish, like Sandy Point or the Barn Island Nature Preserve, Napa Tree,” Goetz said.
In the cove, the algae isn’t bad now. It’s a step in the right direction to getting shellfish back too.
“We need to lower the nitrogen and get a bed that they’ll thrive in,” Goetz said.
This is a long process. Goetz estimates it will take ten or so years before shellfish may return.
Shellfish left the cove about twenty years ago.
