Abundance and Distribution of Inshore Benthic 

 Fauna off Southwestern Long Island, N.Y. 1 



FRANK W. STEIMLE, JR. 2 and RICHARD B. STONE 3 

 ABSTRACT 



This paper describes a qualitative and quantitative census of the inshore benthic fauna off southwest 

 Long Island over the period February 1966 through January 1967, prior to construction of an ocean sewer 

 outfall in the general vicinity. Preliminary analyses of data indicate the presence of three distinct com- 

 munities: 1) an inshore medium to coarse grain sand community dominated by the bivalve, Tellina agilis, 

 the amphipod, Protohaustorius deichmannae , and the echinoderm, Echinarachnius parma; 2) an 

 offshore silty fine sand community dominated by the bivalve, Nucula proximo, and the polychaete, 

 Nephtys incisa; and 3) a community dominated by the blue mussel, Mytilus edulis. 



INTRODUCTION 



In 1966, the Sandy Hook Laboratory, Middle At- 

 lantic Coastal Fisheries Center, made a census of 

 the benthic fauna off the southwest coast of Long 

 Island. The objective was to collect quantitative and 

 qualitative data on benthic biota in an attempt to 

 evaluate the extent of existing pollution and to pro- 

 vide baseline data that could be used to determine 

 effects of future domestic waste disposal in these 

 waters (Stone and Steimle, 1966). 



One method to study the effects of pollution in the 

 aquatic environment is to investigate changes in 

 benthic faunal species composition, distribution, 

 andnumbers. Reish(1957, 1959, 1960), Filice(1959), 

 and Kitamori, Kobayashi, and Nagota (1959) stres- 

 sed the importance of bottom-dwelling organisms to 

 the study of water quality in the marine environ- 

 ment. Marine benthic populations, especially 

 polychaetes (Reish, 1970) and amphipods (J. B. 

 Pearce, National Marine Fisheries Service, Sandy 

 Hook Laboratory, Highlands, N.J., pers. comm., 

 1972), have shown to be altered in the vicinity of a 

 pollution source, e.g., domestic sewer outfall. This 

 alteration may be evident as a change in community 

 composition and species abundance. 



1 This survey was funded by Manganaro, Martin and Lincoln, 

 Consulting Engineers, New York, N.Y. 



2 Sandy Hook Laboratory, Middle Atlantic Coastal Fisheries 

 Center, NMFS, NOAA, Highlands, NJ 07732. 



3 Atlantic Estuarine Fisheries Center, National Marine 

 Fisheries Service, NOAA. Beaufort, NC 28516. 



In this paper, we present a preliminary analysis of 

 data, which includes 11 cruises of the RV 

 Challenger over transects from Rockaway Inlet to 

 Fire Island during the period February 1966 through 

 January 1967. The data analyzed are derived from 

 423 grab collections of benthic and epibenthic fauna. 

 This study represents the first such benthic census in 

 this part of the New York Bight, although work has 

 been done in adjacent estuaries (Townes, 1939). 



METHODS 



We established 39 sampling stations along seven 

 transects normal to the adjacent beach (Fig. 1). The 

 transects ranged over proposed sewage outfall loca- 

 tions near Jones Inlet, Long Island, N.Y. Each 

 transect began at a point as near shore as water 

 depths and surf conditions would normally allow the 

 Challenger to enter and extended seaward from 7.4 

 to 11.1 km. We spaced the sampling stations at 1.8 

 km intervals along the seven transects, except for 

 Station D 1 , which was moved east 0.5 km because of 

 a dangerous shoal. Station depths ranged from 4.9 to 

 25.2 m. Station coordinates are given to the nearest 

 0.1 nautical mile in Appendix Table 1. 



Each station was sampled once a month from Feb- 

 ruary 1966 through January 1967, except the De- 

 cember 1966 cruise which was cancelled because of 

 adverse weather conditions. The interval between 

 starting dates was 30 days and all stations were sam- 

 pled within 5 days. 



