Plum Island’s Watery Environs

Over five days in September 2019, a team of divers and marine scientists conducted a first-of-its-kind marine survey of the underwater habitats around Plum Island. They spent the following winter and spring poring over their field notes, photographs, samples, and data, and compiled their findings into a report titled “Initial Survey of Plum Island's Marine Habitats.”

The study, supported by Save the Sound, New York Natural Heritage Program, and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and funded by an anonymous donor, revealed an immense abundance of animal and plant life in a wide range of habitat types just off the threatened island’s shores.

In August 2021, a team returned to make a collective 26 dives over five days, exploring seven transects and collecting information on the substrate, plants, and animals. New species not recorded in the earlier dive were found, including thousands of long, ghostly white lined anemones attached to underwater boulders in one quadrat. Overall, the number of species identified doubled over the previous dive, in part because the dive team was expanded from two to four divers, and samples were collected from a greater number of quadrats. Double the number of algae species were identified in this second dive, thanks to analysis by marine botanist and habitat restoration specialist Steve Schott of Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, which also has been conducting marine research off Plum Island.

During this second study, divers with InnerSpace Scientific Diving commented on the lack of marine debris off Plum Island’s shores. Unlike other locations in Long Island Sound, off Plum Island, “We didn’t find one piece of trash, one bottle, one bottlecap, not even a piece of fishing line on the bottom,” said Steve Resler, owner of InnerSpace.

See the full 2022 dive report here.

And check out this wonderful watery video by Steve!