Sharks, sea turtles, seals — our region's waterways are bursting with life this time of year. The latest in a docuseries on underwater ecosystems will feature marine life off Long Island’s south shore and Montauk Point. WSHU’s Sabrina Garone spoke with the filmmaker Tomas Koeck to learn more.
Episode 2 of Ocean State: Rhode Island's Wild Coast will be available to stream June 15 at OceanStateMedia.org, or with PBS Passport.
WSHU: Why Rhode Island?
TK: A lot of people overlook our ocean environment, and that's why I decided to start this series. It's called Ocean State: Rhode Island's Wild Coast, but we are covering other parts of the Northeast and the broader New England area because, well, you know, the ocean doesn't have boundaries! A lot of wildlife utilize these different currents along the Atlantic and along the Northeast to get where they need to go. Rhode Island is sort of this vertex, this area where a lot of wildlife propagate. It's this cool spot where you get a lot of animals coming from the south, from the mid-Atlantic, and you get a lot of animals that like the colder water that are coming from the north. That's why we're centering it in Rhode Island, but I want to make it very clear to audiences that this is going to be covering areas in their own backyards, as well.
WSHU: And a lot of this next episode that's coming out was shot in our waters, right? Can you give us an idea of what kind of marine life you guys captured there?
TK: We worked with a really great guy, Sutton Lynch — really talented drone videographer. Then we went out as well, and we filmed in Block Island Sound, off Montauk, and off Long Island. We were filming the menhaden, and then the humpback whales lunge feeding.
There were really cool scenarios where humpback whales were in shallow water right off of Long Island, and actually really close to the shoreline. You can often see them lunge feeding, bursting through the water and using their powerful tails to push through, use their strength to lunge out, catch a ton of menhaden in their mouth, and then keep moving along. The Long Island area is really integral for so many different species of wildlife. It's a good little hotspot, a little feeding area for a lot of wildlife that are migrating north and south. This episode is called Tides of Change, and it's all about the changing seasons in the Northeast. Long Island gets a lot in terms of wildlife in late fall as everything starts to move down south.
WSHU: And the menhaden are really key, right? That's why we've been seeing more sharks and more whales?
TK: It's an interesting combination. We've been seeing more spinner sharks off of Long Island. Spinner sharks like warmer water, and we don't touch on this part in the documentary, but we actually did some spinner sharks in our pilot episode called Chasing Fins — that's what we got nominated for a New England Emmy for. The spinner sharks are moving up the coastline because they are just following the warmer waters, and actually spinner shark nurseries are kind of bleeding into areas where they weren't previously. But in terms of everything else, you know, menhaden are really, really important. They are one of the most important animals on our planet because they support so many different species. Whether it's predators or, I guess you could call them more "casual predators" like humpback whales — they are feeding on the menhaden profusely in that area. Osprey really depend on the menhaden; striped bass eat menhaden; bluefish eat menhaden. They're just such an important fish for our planet and especially for the Northeast.
WSHU: Yeah, and you were telling me there's a focus on other fish off Long Island as well; can you take me through some of those?
TK: One of my favorite fish, and I'm guessing many other people's favorite fish because it's a very popular sport fish, is the striped bass. Striped bass is a beautiful, charismatic animal and a lot of fishermen, I think, are used to seeing striped bass when they catch them, right? But we had awesome opportunities to actually get in the water, swim with these schooling striped bass as they start moving south. We got some cool drone footage of striped bass swimming around the menhaden, causing some disruptions with the menhaden. They're just a really charismatic predator. And they get big! There's speculation with some of these numbers, but old data has striped bass reaching over 90 pounds. But, you know, depending on who you talk to, some people say it's more folklore. But sharks eat them, whales eat them — it's important for the environment to have more of those, too.
Everyone learns about the food chain, the food web when they grow up, and it's still very accurate today. You need the plankton in the water to feed the menhaden, and you need the menhaden to feed the bluefish and the striped bass and then moving up from there — sharks, seals eating striped bass. Everything is so interconnected, you know, so we need to make sure that things continue to stay healthy. We can all be responsible and fish responsibly. I love fishing; it's so much fun, but it's important that we keep these places wild. I think when people watch Tide of Change, they'll realize how wild a place is in our backyard. We get too used to watching wildlife documentaries of very remote, faraway places. What we want to touch on is that the wild sometimes is in your very own backyard. Grab a mask, grab a snorkel! If you're off Block Island or off of some little snorkel spots around the Northeast, you can see a lot of this stuff yourself. It isn't far away; you just got to peek beneath the surface.
WSHU: I want to ask you about the first episode too, because there was that huge focus on eelgrass, and we've been covering some unique efforts in eelgrass planting here in Long Island Sound. Could you just talk about why these meadows are so important as well?
TK: A lot of people ask me, you know, why eelgrass as the first episode? A lot of it has to do with timing, right? The late summer is one of the best times to film eelgrass, but the main reason that I really wanted to touch on eelgrass for our first full episode was just like, you know, a lot of the other topics we're covering, they're so important for our environment. I grew up in the Long Island Sound, in Fairfield, Connecticut. The beaches that I got used to — you're snorkeling, you're swimming, and you're not really seeing much. I thought that's how our environments are supposed to look. But eelgrass used to cover the majority of the Long Island Sound, at least, according to scientists looking through records. It's because of our mistreatment of the environment that we've made it so eelgrass is not able to exist in a lot of the areas they used to be. One of the biggest causes is people putting fertilizers in their lawns. What happens is you have the runoff from the rain that pushes the nutrients into the water. The nutrients cause plankton blooms, which choke out the eelgrass. If people watch episode one, you'll see off Block Island a very healthy meadow. That's what a lot of these environments should look like.
WSHU: Are there any areas off Long Island or Connecticut in particular that you like, personally get really excited to shoot?
TK: Off of the Hamptons, off of Montauk — people should really try to go out with a pair of binoculars and just spend a couple of mornings hanging out on the beach. Look with your binoculars and try to find activity. When most people look out in the ocean, they look out for a couple of minutes, they don't see anything — but there's probably something in there if you wait a little bit longer! You can actually catch some of this really cool wildlife. Off of Montauk is a really exciting place because there's so much going on. It's one of those vertex points, right? You have a lot of fish moving in, you have a lot of bait following the fish, and that can be a really good place to try to see some activity, and that's where we were able to get a lot of activity for this next episode.
WSHU: We are so spoiled on Long Island, truly, and I don't even think people realize half the time!
TK: Oh, we're spoiled everywhere! I'm surprised at how many people I talk to, and they're not aware that there's tons of different shark species, and rays, and if you go really far off the coast, you're seeing the mako sharks and the pelagic species. That's the stuff we're looking to cover with this series. It's a five-part series — each episode is going to be covering like a different kind of area. We have Eelgrass Meadows right off the beach; the next episode looks at winter in RI, looking at whales, Mystic Aquarium seal rescues, volunteer groups researching...it's all right in their own backyard.
