American Littoral Society

Conservation-american Littoral Society restores ecologically healthy and resilient coastal habitats along the atlantic coast and the Delaware bay region. The Society leads thousands of volunteers in coastal cleanups of the new york state beach shoreline. We plant dunes with corporations, private groups, municipalities, and school groups to protect life, limb and property from dangerous storms. We are working to restore connectivity to coastal watersheds to improve water quality as well as provide passage for migratory fish species. The Society's projects include living shorlines, a method of land stabilization that protects the shoreline from erosion while preserving, enhancing, or creating habitat. The "shuck it don't chuck it" shell recycling program was created by the Society to recycle oyster shells from local restaurants. The shell is returned to the water where it provides a substrate for new oysters. Oyster shells from restaurants ordinarily ends up in landfills. Oyster reefs also provide homes for other marine life and protect shorelines. The Society works with communities, homeowners, and businesses to reduce storm run-off through green storm water management and water friendly landscaping.

Education-the Society connects people of all ages to the coast through educational nature walks, fishing clinics, field trips, and volunteer opportunities. Our staff naturalists host public programs throughout the year including sunset seining, horseshoe crab walks, surf fishing clinics, bird walks, seal and winter waterfowl walks, and wild edible plant walks. Fish tagging-since the inception of the Society's fish tagging program in 1965, more than 970,000 fish have been tagged by our volunteer taggers. Currently, the program's target species is striped bass and other fish of the Littoral zone, including summer flounder, bluefish, tautog, and black seabass. The program currently has more than 450 active taggers who tag over 15,000 fish per year. Tagging is an important biological method for monitoring fish, because, unlike other animals, they spend almost all of their entire lives out of the sight of researchers. The program aids scientists too as our tagging data is transferred to the database of the national marine fisheries service laboratory.

Advocacy-everything we do at the Society is about the public trust. The coast belongs to all of us and our advocacy and policy program has been protecting the average person and their stake in the coast for more than 50 years. We speak out for the coast, marine life and its habitats, and for the benefit of diverse coastal communities. Our advocacy is often community based, working on the most pressing problems with the people who are most affected. We seek opportunities to provide the public with the knowledge and tools they need to raise their voices along with us. The main areas of interest where the Society advocates for better public policy to protect the Littoral zone are coastal public access, climate change, coastal land use reform, and natural resource protection. A grant from the william penn foundation is providing support for a study to identify water quality improvement opportunities to reduce bacteria in the 27 mile stretch of the Delaware river flowing past philadelphia, camden, chester and wilmington. Working with people representing all aspects of the river's use, our goal is to develop a "road map" to increase equitable opportunities for swimming and paddling in targeted areas as well as advance community health, public access, and job creation.