SoundBites Spring 2026

SoundBites ACTION FOR OUR REGION’S ENVIRONMENT

IN THIS ISSUE • • • •

Latest Beach Grades 2,211 Lobster Traps Unified Water Study Season Rainbow Dam Update

Latest with Leah

What's at Stake in Washington A few weeks ago, I stepped outside and noticed how much had changed. The air carried a different energy. Native plants were reaching skyward, and birdsong filled the spaces between the trees above. Another chapter unfolding: the landscape’s annual cycle of wetlands greening, meadows blooming, pollinators returning, and fish spawning.

Moments like these remind me that nature is always in motion, how incredibly resilient the environment is, and why our work matters.

Right now, we are paying close attention to what is happening in Washington, DC. There is proposed legislation that would reauthorize the Long Island Sound Partnership and the National Estuary Program (NEP), and funding for both programs for Fiscal Year 2027 is on the table.

The Long Island Sound Partnership is a bi-state collaboration consisting of federal and state agencies and stakeholders dedicated to restoring and protecting the Sound. The NEP is an Environmental Protection Agency program focused on improving the waters, habitats, and living resources of estuaries of national significance. Long Island Sound is one of 28 estuaries designated under the program.

In 2025, a new Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP) was developed by these programs. The plan focuses on four major goal areas: clean waters and healthy watersheds; thriving habitats and abundant wildlife; sustainable and resilient communities; and an informed and engaged public. It lays out broad actions that should be taken to achieve these goals over the next five years.

The implementation of the CCMP and support for the Long Island Sound Partnership and the NEP are essential to our work to protect and improve the health of the Sound. The 119th Congress will wrap at the end of this year, so the clock is ticking!

Leah Lopez President

From Long Island Sound to the English Channel Drew Nemetz plans an iconic swim to benefit Save the Sound Cold water. Strong current. No wetsuit. This October, Drew Nemetz will take on one of the world's most demanding endurance challenges: a swim across the English Channel, spanning approximately 21 miles from England to France.

What makes someone attempt a feat like this? For Drew, the answer begins on the shores of Tod’s Point in Old Greenwich, Connecticut.

He spent his childhood summers there, swimming, exploring tide pools, and developing a deep connection to the water. One year, the beach closed for weeks because used syringes and other medical waste had polluted the water.

The shutdown left a lasting impression on the young boy, who spent so much time in the water—both the Sound and the pools of lower Fairfield County as a member of his high-school swim team.

Years later, Drew has combined both loves as an open-water swimmer. Having completed events such as the 20 Bridges Swim Around Manhattan (left), he now has his sights set on the English Channel and is dedicating the swim to support Save the Sound and our work to protect and restore the waters that mean so much to him. Scan the QR code to follow Drew's journey.

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Published June 2026 by Save the Sound. All rights reserved.

Articles in this newsletter may be reprinted with permission • avandine@savethesound.org Contributors: Killian Duborg, Josh Garskof, Laura McMillan, David Seigerman, Anne Urkawich, Amanda VanDine, and Amy Wu.

2,211 Lobster Traps Recovered Inside a collaborative effort to reduce marine debris and protect underwater ecosystems Early this summer, three years after he started as Save the Sound’s fisheries technician, Nico Acuna Perales will reach a milestone. He will embark on our Soundkeeper team’s 100th trip onto the Sound to remove abandoned lobster traps.

Since late 2022, we have partnered with The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk and Project Oceanology in Connecticut (and, more recently, with Dr. David Hudson of Remote Ecologist) and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County in New York to recover lost or abandoned lobster traps littering Long Island Sound—in some cases, for decades. Save the Sound has retrieved 2,211 traps so far in the waters off Connecticut, primarily between Bridgeport and Clinton—and largely pulled by Nico, who’s made 86 trips.

“I feel we are making progress,” he says.

“We know there are still thousands of traps around the Sound, but each one that we take out and recycle is a step in the right direction.”

This Lobster Trap Retrieval and Assessment Partnership is removing more than the traps and debris often found inside (cans, cutlery, sunglasses, fishing gear). It’s also reducing the risk for all kinds of wildlife that keep getting caught by these untended traps—creating collateral damage known as “ghost fishing.” Over the years, Nico has found Atlantic purple sea urchins, crabs, tautog, black sea bass, and, yes, even the occasional lobster in the traps he pulls off the Sound floor.

One of Nico’s most memorable trips was finding an especially remarkable bycatch: a 28-inch long Atlantic cod (rather large for the Sound), that he recovered and released from a trap abandoned in 2001.

Says Nico, “Being involved in this project and knowing that our work helps remove harmful marine debris and protect wildlife gives me a real sense of purpose.”

A grappling hook is towed along the seafloor in search of rope lines connected to abandoned lobster traps.

Each trap is opened and inspected for marine life.

The data is recorded by hand on every trip.

An Atlantic purple sea urchin was found on the trap’s metal frame and carefully released into the Sound.

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10th Season of the Unified Water Study is Underway A growing partnership is creating one of the most valuable long-term water quality datasets in the region

Elena, now our laboratory manager, has come a long way. So has the Unified Water Study, which kicked off its 10th season on May 1. The UWS was created by Save the Sound to standardize protocols, procedures, and equipment used by monitoring groups to gather water quality data in bays and harbors around Long Island Sound. There were 12 groups that first season, gathering data in 24 embayments. Now, there are 31 monitoring 52 locations.

Back in 2017, Elena Colón was a seasonal employee at Save the Sound. One of her first assignments had two parts: • Collect a water sample near a combined sewer outfall in Alley Creek, Queens. This was for the new pathogen indicator bacteria monitoring program, launched a few years earlier.

• Walk over to the parking lot at the Alley Pond Environmental Center and meet someone from Friends of the Bay, who would be delivering a cooler of foil packets containing chlorophyll samples collected from Oyster Bay, Cold Spring Harbor, and Mill Neck Creek. This was part of the brand-new Unified Water Study (UWS).

The second part would’ve been a lot easier had Elena not sunk knee-deep into the muddy creek bottom during the first part.

She had to pull each leg out of its neoprene boot, stand there in her socks, and rescue her new boots from the muck. “There was no way I was going to let this sampling location take my boots,” said Elena, who emerged mud-covered but undaunted, collected her first sample for Save the Sound, and made it on time to the pickup point for her first UWS handoff.

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Top: View of New York City from the Western Narrows of Long Island Sound.

Photo credit: Mark Liflander Above: Peter Linderoth (L), our director of healthy waters and lands, and Elena Colón (R), our laboratory manager, collect water samples during the first season of the Unified Water Study in 2017.

Right: Save the Sound staff collect real-time water quality data in Eastchester Bay, tracking dissolved oxygen, temperature, salinity, and other indicators of ecosystem health.

The samples are no longer hand-delivered via parking-lot rendezvous, then driven to commercial labs for processing.

Instead, they are shipped overnight to the John and Daria Barry Foundation Water Quality Lab in our Larchmont office, where processing and analysis are overseen by Elena.

Save the Sound uses that data to grade the ecological health of those embayments. Bay and harbor grades based on water quality data collected during the 2025 UWS season will be released in the 2026 Long Island Sound Report Card, coming this September.

“Now that we’re approaching 10 years of collected data, we can really understand the impacts of climate change, development, and restoration projects, or the implementation of ordinances and laws,” says Elena. “Decades from now, the data we’re collecting are still going to be used. I feel like I’m a part of history.”

2026 Unified Water Study Partner Groups Ash Creek Conservation Association

Connecticut River Conservancy

Avalon Nature Preserve

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County Marine Program

Bridgeport Regional Aquaculture Science and Technology Education Center Bronx River Alliance

East Basin Enterprises LLC Fishers Island Seagrass Management Coalition Friends of the Bay

Citizen Science Learning Center Clean Up Sound and Harbors

Friends of the Farm River Estuary

Coalition To Save Hempstead Harbor

Guardians of Flushing Bay

Harbor Watch

Save the River — Save the Hills

Interstate Environmental Commission

Save the Sound

New England Science & Sailing Project Oceanology Remote Ecologist River Advocates of South Central Connecticut Roger Tory Peterson Estuary Center Salonga Wetlands Advocate Network

Setauket Harbor Task Force SoundWaters SUNY Maritime The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk Town of Darien Town of Fairfield Conservation Department Town of Stratford Conservation Department

Partner groups highlighted in bold have been part of the Unified Water Study since its inaugural season in 2017.

The Beach Grades Are Out! Explore the latest water quality data on Sound Health Explorer Our Beach Grades delivered good news for more than three-quarters of 192 public and private beaches around Long Island Sound. Seventy-seven percent of Sound beaches received As or Bs, based on water quality data collected by local health departments during the 2025 swimming season.

For the other 23 percent, the Beach Grades provided a reminder of the water quality challenges across our region—polluted stormwater runoff, inadequate wastewater infrastructure, and profuse pet and wildlife waste. Especially in the western Sound: 11 of the 16 beaches to receive Ds or Fs were in either New York City or Westchester County.

Watch our Beach Grades webinar on our YouTube channel.

See the latest grades for beaches near you at SoundHealthExplorer.org.

Oakland Beach in Rye, NY. Photo credit: Mark Liflander

Advancing Fish Passage and River Restoration Research, regulation, and advocacy converge at Rainbow Dam Rainbow Dam stands 59 feet high and 500 feet wide on the Farmington River in Windsor, Connecticut.

The century-old hydropower dam blocks fish passage to more than 95 percent of the watershed, cutting off spawning habitat for migratory fish including American shad, blueback herring, alewife, sea lamprey, and American eel. Stagnant water behind the dam also contributes to harmful algal blooms that threaten fish, wildlife, and river health.

"Nobody's alive today that really witnessed how full of fish our rivers used to be," says Senior Director of Ecological Restoration Paul Woodworth. "We're trying to bring back the abundant landscape that none of us have seen before. And these migratory fish are foundational to the food web; they are forage for so many other species of fish and wildlife."

Save the Sound is working behind the scenes to make removal of this dam a reality, and we have made important progress over the past year. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-

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funded study is evaluating the feasibility of dam removal, while Save the Sound attorneys, working alongside partner organizations, have successfully pushed for a federal review of the dam's regulatory status.

That effort included gathering data that the Farmington River is navigable and should fall under federal oversight. In response to this evidence, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has

opened an inquiry into whether Rainbow Dam is subject to federal authority, an important step toward securing fish passage requirements.

At the same time, Connecticut recently strengthened state law to give the public another pathway to seek fish passage improvements at dams. After decades of blocked migration, new opportunities might be emerging to help fish return to the upper reaches of the Farmington River.

Save the Sound staff and partners conduct a float test in May 2025 to show the Farmington River's navigability.

Cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item in the world Their filters are made of plastic that do not fully break down—but even the paper and tobacco, as they decompose, release toxic chemicals into soil and water that harm wildlife and habitats. Marine animals often mistake cigarette butts for food, leading to poisoning and malnutrition. Help us keep these pollutants out of Long Island Sound by joining a cleanup near you at savethesound.org/cleanups.

Donor Spotlight: Tim Hopkins Supporting a healthier Sound future Tim Hopkins grew up sailing, fishing, and searching for shore critters along Lake Erie’s Canadian shoreline—and experienced polluted waters firsthand. It was the late 1960s, when the lake suffered from large dead zones caused by nutrient pollution, and the Cuyahoga River caught fire after a spark landed on an oil slick.

These events unfolded at the start of the environmental movement, when people united to take action through the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the first Earth Day.

Combined with a passion for sailing, Tim’s strong ethic for water pollution prevention resulted in a lifelong commitment to environmental stewardship. After learning to sail on Lake Erie, he spent many summers sailing throughout the East, including Chesapeake Bay, Buzzards Bay, and Long Island Sound. For nearly a decade in the 1990s, Tim lived in Darien, Connecticut, where he sailed the Sound when it was far more polluted than it is today.

“I believe in the power of connecting people to address a common challenge,” says Tim. “When I was given the opportunity to direct a significant gift on behalf of the Barrett Family Foundation to a charity of my choice, Save the Sound was easy to choose.”

Tim’s donation, part of our Sound Future Campaign, will help ensure our Soundkeeper patrols can easily reach all 600 miles of coastline around Long Island Sound to improve the estuary and fishery.

“Focusing on what’s most meaningful to oneself is a guiding principle in my life,” reflects Tim. “My wife, Aliina, and I are planning our future in Mystic by the water, and I’m glad to contribute to protecting the Long Island Sound estuary we love through Save the Sound.”

127 Church St, 2nd Floor New Haven, CT 06510 savethesound.org 203-787-0646

July 31 – August 9 Join our kayak, stand-up paddleboard, and canoe fundraiser supporting clean water across the Long Island Sound region.

• Register at savethesound.org/paddle and set up your personal or team fundraising page.

• Paddle solo or with friends and family from any location as many times as you can during the 10-day event window.

• Fundraising teams of five or more will receive Save the Sound bucket hats.

• The top three paddlers by total distance will win prize packages—and bragging rights!

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