3/27/2017
LISFF awarded $24,000 Grant to Mystic Aquarium and CUSH Stonington Harbors Water Quality Study and Public Engagement Project
We are very excited to be collaborating with Mystic Aquarium on this Long Island Sound Futures Fund project! It will allow us to monitor five additional sites in the Mystic River, which will provide a more comprehensive picture of our watershed. We will also be expanding our public outreach efforts with additional organic turf, landscaping, and gardening workshops and participation in community environmental events.
MaryEllen Mateleska (new CUSH board member and Mystic Aquarium Director of Education and Conservation), Fran Pijar and Sally Cogan (co-directors of CUSH Water Monitoring) are gearing up for the new monitoring season, and we need your help! Those five additional sites mean five new volunteers are needed. If you are interested in joining us as a citizen scientist collecting water samples or at a community outreach event, please let us know at info@cushinc.org – we’d love to have you as part of the team!
Long Island Sound Report Card and Unified Water Study (UWS) Grading the water quality and ecosystem health of the Urban Sea
Recognizing the critical importance of Long Island Sound’s bays and harbors, Save the Sound expanded the scope of the LIS Report Card by initiating a Sound-wide embayment study. CUSH was proud to be invited as one of three groups to pilot the project during the 2016 summer monitoring season. We started with five stations in Wequetequock Cove and will be adding Mystic Harbor and River in 2017.
Some of you might have experienced the algae bloom fed by nitrogen runoff that choked Little Narragansett Bay last summer. It definitely interfered with our enjoyment of the water but perhaps more importantly wreaked havoc with the local marine ecosystem! As part of the UWS, in addition to our regular testing we grabbed and identified samples of algae at three sites to better understand the problem.
Our data will be included in future Report Cards, but you can visit http://bit.ly/cush-li-reportcard-2016 for information on the 2016 Report Card.
