Dead-Man's Fingers

How many readers know what “dead-man’s fingers” is? I bet, very few.

Another name for it is “sputnik seaweed.” Still, very few takers?

Aha — how about a Latin scientific name, Codium fragile … still only a few takers?

Well, if you remember, the Russians put a man in space for the first time ever in 1957 on Sputnik 1. In 1957, many of you were mere twinkles in your mothers’ eyes!

Well, in case you are still in the dark, sputnik seaweed first appeared in northeastern Atlantic waters as a seaweed with a hold fast at the bottom of its stem, which allowed it to attach to stones to give it a semi-secure mooring.

It came here by way of Europe; it got to Europe from its native habitat in shallow Asian seawaters. It does extremely well in bays with stony bottoms, one of which, in the neighborhood, is Noyac Bay, a largish tributary in the Peconics system, which washes the shores of the hamlet of Noyac and the Village of North Haven.

When it washes ashore on Noyac beaches during high tides, it forms a serious wrack line, which is awash with many small shells: those shaped like moccasins, called slipper shells, and a few of the prettier and much more delicate jingle shells, the ones you find on marine beaches that are yellowish or pinkish, and translucent to the human eye.

At this writing, it’s the beginning of spring and the full moon-driven tides have washed in thousands of loosed sputnik seaweeds and hundreds of slipper shells along with them. Many have already loosed from their holdfast anchors, stones the size of quarters or half-dollars, and piled together in long, at first greenish, then tan, continuous windrows; they present an interesting picture of brown parallel lines when seen from Long Beach Road while driving westerly in the north lane.

One could find this combination of white sandy beach and light brown rows — spotted with gulls trying to find their lunch or supper — very pleasant, but, after pondering the lack of green piles of eelgrass with the rows, disheartening.

Yes, the pretty green strands of Zostera marina, have pretty much disappeared from Noyac Bay after 65 years of attack at the hands of dead-man’s fingers, perhaps a more apt name for a foreigner that takes no prisoners in its bewildering takeover of a bottom that was once richly fished by Native Americans, then by colonists, but now by only a few boats, patiently moving back and forth, hoping to break a long, spiraling downturn but never succeeding.

Yes, the native eelgrass species is not faring well on our side of the Atlantic Ocean, and with it the bay scallops (Argopectin irradians), perhaps the most delicious of all our native sea foods and one ranking right up there with Homarus americanus.

We had collapses in the bay scallop population in the past. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, there were very few bay scallops harvested. Jump to the “brown tide” years of the mid-1980s — very bad for scallops throughout the Peconics. Now, during the 2020s, the Long Island bay scallop has practically disappeared.

I do have an encyclopedic reference to turn to whenever things look bad. It’s not a book but someone who has passed away, though his word lives on.

It is the one and only Stuart Vorpahl. He is now the late Stuart Vorpahl, but his predictions live on.

In the mid-1980s, when many baymen who annually depended on the bay scallop crop to get by had joined the daily “trade parade” to make a living, Stuart said to me one day that all living things reproduce in cycles, and bay scallops are not an exception. They all have good years and bad years, as if it really didn’t matter what was different about the water, or what bad guy organisms, say, brown algae, were occupying it.

The State Department of Environmental Conservation and those in the state university system who spent their lives studying the ups and downs of this and that organism never heard Stuart’s message. If species that had almost disappeared came back, and they had worked toward its recovery, that was all that mattered.

But Stuart was talking more about the animal side of life, not the plant side. What about eelgrass, you ask? Unfortunately, I never inquired of Mr. Vorpahl. Thus, I don’t know whether he would ever take such a difficult question to mind.

Prior to the 2000s, there were extensive meadows of eelgrass in many local bays and inlets of the Peconics system. Now, despite several years of efforts by the Cornell-Suffolk County’s Marine Extension group working with local towns and villages to restore it, very little took.

The one part of the system, Napeague Harbor in East Hampton, where eelgrass still flourished long after it almost disappeared in the other harbors and inlets was also the one area in the Peconics that never lost its bay scallops during the great scallop die-off of the 1980s. The Town Trustees and National Resources Department worked together tirelessly to create a cordoned-off eelgrass sanctuary that endured well into the 21st century.

So, here we now stand, 22 years into the new century, eelgrass is still doing very poorly, sputnik seaweed has taken over in many inlets and bays — what to do, what to do? Work at raising more oysters? Work at planting kelp for eating? Dredge more and more often? Work at reducing the damaging effects of other tides, in addition to brown tide, such as the one of color that plagues the Shinnecock Bay and Peconics each new year? Ban swimming and boating?

We really don’t know what to do, do we? And Stuart has long since left us.

Damn, damn, damn, those long brown strands! They must know the answer but won’t say a thing!