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Multi-agency Workshop Furthers Understanding of the Complex Science Surrounding the Prevention and/or Mitigation of Brown Tide Blooms.

Long Island mapBrown tide blooms have occurred in coastal waters from Maryland to Rhode Island. These episodic blooms have had serious impacts on benthic seagrass habitat and the hard clam and scallop fisheries of the Peconic Bay and Great South Bay systems of Long Island, NY.  A one-day workshop was held on November 29, 2005 in Yaphank, New York, to discuss what is known about the causes of, and potential approaches to preventing or mitigating, harmful blooms of the phytoplankton, Aureococcus anophagefferens , in Northeast and Mid-Atlantic embayments. Workshop participants represented the brown tide research community, the management communities of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Suffolk County Department of Health Services, the New York Seafood Council, the Peconic Estuary Program, the South Shore Estuary Reserve Office, the Nature Conservancy, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources, the US Geological Survey, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The research presented was largely supported through the Brown Tide Research Initiative, a joint program of the Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research/Coastal Ocean Program and New York Sea Grant, and the Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB). This workshop will be followed by a Brown Tide Research Initiative Public Symposium to be held on Monday, March 20, 2006, from 7-9 pm at Suffolk County Community College, in Riverhead, New York.  The symposium will inform interested stakeholders about what is known about the causes of these blooms, and the science behind possible management options. For more information, contact Susan Banahan.