A small stream, not ten feet wide, spilled into an estuarial flat choked with eelgrass and then into the ocean.
From the wheelhouse, he pointed out a spot on Breezy Point, at the west end of the Rockaways, where the city was attempting to restore local eelgrass (it would, he said, attract menhaden and other indigenous fish).
The bay badly needs flushing, and the breach is doing that, with clean, oxygen-rich water, which means more fish, shellfish and eelgrass.
As they spawn and multiply, they form beds that expand into reefs, and these reefs in turn become hospitable habitats for all manner of marine life: crabs, fish, ribbony eelgrass.
Once-lush beds of eelgrass, shelter for the little fish that feed bigger ones, have largely disappeared from the western part of the bay.
They are shown landing, taking off or clustering in the waves at high tide, always in search of the increasingly scarce eelgrass that is their only sustenance.
Its glass lozenges, held in place by steel or bronze struts, curved both right to left and fore to aft, suggesting swaying eelgrass.
Brant is instead a bird that spends its winters in salt marshes and along estuaries, eating eelgrass.
The algae and seaweed kill eelgrass, where prized bay scallops grow.
