Wayne County Life

Oswego, NY – The New York Sea Grant Launch Steward Program has posted a new blog to provide the public with information on how to look for, remove and properly dispose of aquatic species hitchhikers on motorized and non-motorized vessels. The goal of the New York Sea Grant Launch Steward blog is to encourage the boating public to help prevent the spread of unwanted aquatic invasive species by taking easy-to-implement steps to clean, drain and dry their vessels before moving to a new body of water.

The blog includes an Aquatic Profile of Sodus Bay and shares photos and text on the activities of the crew of seven college stewards who have offered voluntary learn-how watercraft inspections to boaters at sites along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario from Sodus bay to Henderson, the Oswego River, Little Salmon River, Sandy Creek, Stony Creek and Oneida Lake.

The blog is found at http://nysglaunchsteward.blogspot.com.

New York Sea Grant manages the Launch Steward Program in cooperation with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation; New York State Parks; the Towns of Henderson, Scriba and Sodus; the City of Oswego, and Onondaga County. Funding is through a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative administered by the Finger Lakes-Lake Ontario Watershed Protection Alliance.

For more information on the Steward Program and New York Sea Grant, contact New York Sea Grant Coastal Community Development Specialist Mary Penney at 315-312-3042.

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New York Sea Grant (NYSG), with Great Lakes and marine district offices, is among the largest of 33 university programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Sea Grant College Program. NYSG, a cooperative program through the State University of New York (SUNY) and Cornell University, is a federal and state funded research and extension network dedicated to maintaining the environmental quality of coastal and aquatic ecosystems by providing university-based scientific research, education and community outreach programs.

Currently, NYSG is funding 20 research and outreach projects focused on preserving New York State's aquatic natural resources. To see the current research NYSG is funding, visit http://www.seagrant.sunysb.edu/articles/t/research-nysg-funded-projects.