Spartina boxes. Photo by Newtown Creek Alliance. 

WNYC ran a great radio and web story today about the Newtown Creek field work of Sarah Durand, PhD, of the Natural Sciences department of CUNY LaGuardia Community College. Dr. Durand has built habitat structures to encourage shellfish to anchor and other invertebrates to shelter. Cornerstone species like spartina, or saltmarsh cordgrass, attract other species to a waterway in need of much fuller recovery.

We’re very grateful to have Dr. Durand as a HarborLAB adviser, and her colleague, Holly Porter-Morgan, PhD (director of the CUNY LaGCC environmental science program), as a board member.

Stay tuned for HarborLAB’s mussels-to-milkweed coastal habitat restoration!