Sea Grant

35 volunteers help kick off campaign with beach cleanup

One hundred pounds of litter – everything from deflated Mylar balloons and monofilament fishing line to plastic bottles, Styrofoam cups, straws, cigarette butts and lots of bottle caps — filled the buckets and reusable bags of 35 volunteers Thursday at Lighthouse Point Park as they helped launch a campaign to keep plastic trash out of Long Island Sound.

3rd year of #DontTrashLISound campaign adds new partners

Lighthouse Point Park will be the site of a beach cleanup and information outreach event on Aug. 8 to launch this year’s “Don’t Trash Long Island Sound – Break the Single Use Plastic Habit” campaign to encourage people to embrace reusable items instead of throwaway plastics and to protect the Sound.

2 Sea Grant programs support student’s unique summer job

For many college students, the summer after freshman year means heading home for jobs waiting tables, working at youth recreation programs or scooping ice cream at the beach snack bar. But after completing his first year at the University of Delaware, Sam Koeck came home to Connecticut to the kind of paid internship usually afforded only to students further along in college. 

Norwalk harbor is setting for final on-the-water workshop

Connecticut Sea Grant hosted the final in a series of four on-the-water workshops celebrating its 30th anniversary on July 26 on Norwalk Harbor. Seven speakers and 24 passengers toured the busy harbor aboard Spirit of the Sound, the Maritime Aquarium of Norwalk’s hybrid electric vessel.

Shellfish Initiative gets fresh look from commissioner, farmers

State Department of Agriculture Commissioner Bryan Hurlburt met on July 15 with representatives of seven commercial shellfishing businesses, along with state Bureau of Aquaculture and Connecticut Sea Grant staff, to brainstorm revisions and  updates to the 2016 Vision Plan created under the Connecticut Shellfish Initiative.

Plastic pollution is focus of 2019 arts awardee’s work

Using historic and modern techniques, photographer Elizabeth Ellenwood will use a 2019 Connecticut Sea Grant Arts Support award grant to transform plastic beach trash and microplastics into images intended to call attention to global ocean pollution.