One local initiative—the Southold Project in Aquaculture Training (SPAT)—is doing what it can to restock our waters with oysters, clams, and scallops. A Cornell Cooperative Extension program, SPAT teaches volunteers how to grow miniscule shellfish in containers, away from predators, until they reach adult size, when they are released into local creeks and bays.

Armand DeLuca, of Orient, a retired human-resources executive, has been volunteering with SPAT since 2001. “We work year-round every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the Cornell Cedar Beach Marine Center, where we grow shellfish for restoration of the stocks in the Peconic Bay estuary. We operate a hatchery, having built that facility largely with volunteer labor and under the direction of Cornell Cooperative Extension personnel,” he says. Currently there are some 200 member families who participate in the project, with 15 to 20 who do the regular, three-days-a-week routine.

In eight years, DeLuca and his fellow volunteers have grown “many millions of shellfish”—which, not coincidentally, are called also know as “spat.” A single brood animal can spawn millions of larvae in a single spawn, though there is a high degree of mortality during the larval period and continued loss during the grow-out. In cultured situations like SPAT, that loss is reduced because the young shellfish are protected from tides, winds, predators, etc.

This year, SPAT members are focusing on scallops, though they are growing oysters and clams as well. Scallops are the focus this year because, according to DeLuca, they “were decimated in the mid-1980s by the Brown Tide and are still at very low concentration levels. They are also the most delicate and most difficult to culture.”

What do volunteers get out of volunteering with SPAT? For DeLuca, it’s as simple as knowing that he’s giving back to the waters where he lives—yet it’s so much more, too. “I was fortunate to have had a successful career, and now I can contribute to our environment, which is under so much pressure. But I must say that, while I understand my contribution, I have selfish motives for putting so much time into the SPAT project,” he admits. “Those other volunteers with whom I work have become friends. There is a camaraderie that I have never seen before. We come to work three days a week because it gives another purpose to our lives, for social contact, and, yes, sometimes to escape the ‘honey-do list.’ So, our participation is a two-way street.”

To learn more about SPAT, visit counties.cce.cornell.edu/suffolk/spat/home.html