For about thirty years, one company had the exclusive right to harvest roughly 1,400 of the 5,405 underwater acres the Town of Oyster Bay controls in Oyster Bay and Cold Spring harbors. That is more than a quarter of the bottom. The lease held by Frank M. Flower & Sons expired on September 30, 2024, and last fall the Town redrew the map. Newsday reported that the new layout took effect October 8, 2025.
This is the second winter under that public map, and it arrives weeks after the Town landed state money for a dedicated seeding workboat. The summer boats come out in the next few weeks. The work that stays behind tells you who looks after the water now, and how much rebuilding is still underway.
The map under the moorings
The new map put the old lease grounds into three categories. Here is how the Town's waters break down, using figures from Newsday's reporting in August 2025 and March 2026.
| Category | Acres | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Open to the public before the lease ended | 2,874 | Public harvest |
| Former lease grounds added to public harvest | 1,192 | Public harvest since Oct. 8, 2025 |
| New shellfish sanctuaries | 185 | Harvest banned |
| Earlier protected areas | 55 | Harvest banned |
| Marine management areas | 372 | Closed for now, may open later |
The last row matters most for the long run. The Town's Waterway Conservation page says shellfishing stays prohibited in its management areas until shellfish populations reach optimal density. As of January 2026, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service review of the Oyster Bay National Wildlife Refuge described harvest as prohibited in both the sanctuaries and the management areas. It said any future harvest in the management areas depends on sufficient stocks and certified water.
The reason for the protected acreage was spelled out in a town-commissioned survey reported by Newsday. Repeated harvesting without matching seeding had pushed the shellfish population in Oyster Bay waters to "extremely low levels." The company stopped running its hatchery and stopped seeding the bay in 2019, when it learned the lease would not be renewed. Christine Suter, executive director of Friends of the Bay, told Newsday the day the board approved the map: "This is a momentous day."
The small building at Theodore Roosevelt Park
Restocking the public bottom falls to the Town's shellfish hatchery at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park, a small building overlooking the harbor, managed by Tim Gilmartin. The Fish and Wildlife Service document describes the process. Seed raised in the nursery moves to floating upwelling systems in the harbor, then Town or Town-authorized boats carry it out and spread it at low speed. Some of that seeding happens inside the refuge boundary.
The scale is growing, and the numbers need to be read carefully:
- 2025 season, actual: 8,477,000 shellfish seeded, made up of 5,133,000 oysters and 3,343,800 clams, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
- 2026 season, goal: "around 20 million seed" to grow out over the summer, as Gilmartin told Newsday in March.
- Town's framing: an October 7, 2026 Town announcement says the seeding program has grown from fewer than 5 million to more than 20 million a year, counting shellfish raised at the hatchery.
Until this season's total is published, the 20 million figure is best treated as a target. Even so, it would more than double the 2025 total.
In March, the Town's Department of Environmental Resources had three boats, and only one, an aging Boston Whaler, was used mainly for seeding. The Town Board authorized up to $130,000 for a 19- to 21-foot aluminum, flat-bottomed workboat. "We've learned to be a little scrappy here," Gilmartin told Newsday. On October 7, the Town announced that Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz had secured a $130,000 state grant for the purchase. Supervisor Saladino said the planting program "helps enhance water quality" and "bolsters the local economy."
The program also goes beyond seed. The Town plans to keep placing oyster shell to rebuild habitat, may seed with spat-on-shell oysters to encourage reefs, and may plant adult clams to boost reproduction. The plan also proposes an independent shellfish survey every three years, which will be the first real report card on whether the restocking is working.
Water quality decides how much of the map can be used
Restocking the bottom only pays off if the water above it can be certified. On June 29, 2026, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation reclassified parts of Oyster Bay Harbor. It moved 217 acres from certified year-round to uncertified year-round, and another 59 acres from a May-through-October seasonal closure to uncertified year-round. The DEC shellfish closures page has the current boundaries and maps.
Rain also triggers short-term closures. After a late-September closure tied to rainfall, normally certified Oyster Bay Harbor waters reopened on October 1, 2026, still subject to the standing restrictions. The DEC temporary closures page is the place to check status on any given day.
Friends of the Bay tracks much of the underlying data. Every other week from May through October, its volunteers take pathogen samples at 14 open-water sites and 10 tributary and outfall sites, and the group posts maps on its water quality data page. The 2026 sampling season has just closed. The same organization runs Re-Clam The Bay sanctuary stocking and works with the Town to place oysters in conservation areas. In 2025, its activity log records more than 129,000 oysters sorted and deployed into Oyster Bay with SOAR. Separately, the North Shore Oyster Gardening Program, associated with the Oyster Bay/Cold Spring Harbor Protection Committee, has drawn hundreds of local volunteers since 2017, according to the Long Island Sound Partnership.
What's on the water between now and January
As the work on the bottom continues, the surface turns over for winter. Here are the dates from the end of the boating season into the new year:
- Sunday, November 8: The Town's North Shore marina summer season ends.
- Saturday, November 14: The WaterFront Center's 2026–2027 Frostbiting Series begins, with C420 and Optimist fleets racing on nine Saturdays through January 9, 2027, weather and participation permitting.
- Tuesday, December 1: In-water winter storage opens at the residents-only Theodore Roosevelt Marina and runs through March 31.
The frostbite racing happens in West Harbor, north of The WaterFront Center's mooring field. On race days, C420 dock-launch rides start at 10:15 a.m., the first warning sounds at 11 a.m., and the last-race warning is at 2 p.m. Sailors can sign up for the full series or for single days. Full-season entry is $600 per C420 or $350 per Optimist, and day-only sailors are not scored for series trophies. The frostbite page has registration details.
The resident's side of the public bottom
Opening 1,192 acres to public harvest also matters to anyone who digs for clams themselves. The Town Clerk issues annual recreational shellfish permits to Town residents aged 14 and older. Applicants need ID and proof of residency, and permits are available at the Clerk's offices in Oyster Bay and Massapequa. The current requirements are on the Town's Shellfish Management page. Before going out, check the permit rules with the Town Clerk and the area's status with DEC. This post is general information, not legal advice.
The open acres are not the same as full beds. Before the map took effect, a Baymen Association representative told Newsday that the former lease plots were depleted and could take time to recover. The hatchery at Theodore Roosevelt Park, the new workboat and the closed sanctuary acreage are the Town's plan for that recovery. The first independent survey under the proposed three-year cycle is the next measure of how well it is going.
Here at Farber Locke Team, we follow the harbor because it shapes daily life in Oyster Bay as much as South Street does. If you live near the water and want to know how harbor-side features like these affect what your home is worth, start with an Instant Home Valuation and we'll go through the numbers with you.
