(At left) Marine Camp students explore their seine catch before release. Credit: Antoinette Clemetson/NYSG; (At right) Hildur Palsdottir Dello-Iacono (Nassau County CCE Educator) caught a horseshoe crab during marine camp at Jones Beach. Credit: Antoinette Clemetson/NYSG
Contact:
Antoinette Clemetson, NYSG Marine Fisheries Specialist, E: aoc5@cornell.edu, P: (631) 824-4407
NYSG organizes a marine camp for youths from communities in New York’s Nassau County
Stony Brook, NY, May 27, 2025 - New York Sea Grant (NYSG) educators are skilled at utilizing New York’s diverse shorelines as outdoor classrooms to teach lessons about coastal ecosystems to audiences of all ages. This place-based educational strategy often describes ways to mitigate adverse human impacts, and empowers communities to participate in coastal conservation efforts. While it may require less than twenty minutes for Long Island residents to travel to the shoreline for recreation, many low-income and immigrant households seldom have the opportunity to benefit from this local resource.
In 2024, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) continued its leadership in a partnership with Nassau County Cooperative Extension and the Jones Beach Energy & Nature Center to organize marine camp for underserved youth in low-income communities, teach lesson plans about shoreline ecology, and highlight common coastal and marine wildlife for camp participants.
More than 300 students from twelve youth support service organizations attended marine camp classes at the Jones Beach Energy and Nature Center. This was the largest annual student enrollment in the seven-year history of this marine camp program. Eight one-day classes were offered, including opportunities to use a seine net to catch-and-release fish, hike to learn about dune ecology, tour the natural history museum display, and receive an introduction to green energy sources. Ten youth support service organizations received more than $10,000 from the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation Connect Kids to Parks Field Trip Grant program to offset transportation costs.
This NYSG marine camp partnership provides ‘hands-on’ experiences to engage youth from low-income households in marine and coastal education programming
Project Partners/Funders:
• Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County
• Jones Beach Energy & Nature Center
More Info: New York Sea Grant
Established in 1966, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Sea Grant College Program promotes the informed stewardship of coastal resources in 34 joint federal/state university-based programs in every U.S. coastal state (marine and Great Lakes) and Puerto Rico. The Sea Grant model has also inspired similar projects in the Pacific region, Korea and Indonesia.
Since 1971, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.
NYSG historically leverages on average a 3 to 6-fold return on each invested federal dollar, annually. We benefit from this, as these resources are invested in Sea Grant staff and their work in communities right here in New York.
Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.
New York Sea Grant, one of the largest of the state Sea Grant programs, is a cooperative program of the State University of New York (SUNY) and Cornell University. The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Oswego, the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark, and in Watertown. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, in Queens, at Brooklyn College, with Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC, in Bronx, with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County in Kingston, and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County in Elmsford.
For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org, follow us on social media (Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, and YouTube). NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which it publishes 2-3 times a year.