News About SAVE Environmental
Enviro Close-Up #705 -- Restoring Eelgrass Meadows, Vital to the Marine Environment
Video published September 21, 2025​
Rob Vasiluth has developed a system—now being pursued in a bunch of areas in the United States—for restoring eelgrass, a plant that’s at the foundation of coastal waters. The 9/11 attack was a turning point for Vasiluth. An operating engineer, he was in Manhattan hoisting a section of a sign on a midtown hotel when he saw the World Trade Center a few miles to the south being struck. Following that devastating loss of life, he committed himself to, as he says in this Enviro Close-Up, do “something to save life.”
As a resident of Long Island, east of Manhattan, he began focusing on what he calls a “miracle plant”—eelgrass—that has itself been devastated, reduced to a tiny percentage of what it had been several decades ago in New York State waters. His idea: using a glue that is “non-toxic and biodegradable” to affix eelgrass seeds to clams. It is cyanoacrylate, the ingredient that is the basis for Super Glue and Krazy Glue. The clams, he thought, would burrow themselves into the sea bottom and the seeds could far better germinate than, as has been done, just spreading the seeds over water. And the concept has worked well.
Rob has been working with The Nature Conservancy and other environmental organizations, and guests on the program include Carl LoBue, New York Program Director for The Nature Conservancy and Eve Franklin Lynes, a graduate student involved with his SAVE Environmental.
Participants in Enviro Close-Up Video: Karl Grossman, Eve Franklin Lynes, Robert Vasiluth, and Carl Lobue
With clams, glue and a modified treadmill, scientists work to restore eelgrass in Long Island Sound
Austin Mirmina, Oct. 7, 2025, CT Insider
​
WESTBROOK — From a small boat idling near a breakwater in the Long Island Sound, Rob Vasiluth feeds large metal trays of clams down a chute and onto a makeshift conveyor belt fashioned from an old treadmill.
The clams, specked with tiny green-and-black eelgrass seeds, ride briskly along the rubber belt before plopping off the back of the boat and sinking to the Sound's shallow, muddy bottom. There, the clams will bury themselves, giving the seeds a place to sprout and begin restoring a once-thriving marine habitat now struggling to survive.​ The Sound was once carpeted with dense underwater meadows of eelgrass, or Zostera marina – a type of seagrass with long ribbon-like blades. The flowering plant is vital for the Sound's ecosystem, offering shelter for dozens of species, filtering pollutants and absorbing climate-warming carbon dioxide, among other benefits. Today, those meadows have largely disappeared, plagued by poor water quality, coastal development and, more recently, rising temperatures caused by climate change, according to a report by the Long Island Sound Partnership.​​
11TH HOUR RACING for the ocean
​
Video and interviews featuring SAVE Environmental. 11th Hour Racing are funding Save the Sound eelgrass restoration efforts using SAVE Environmental techniques. ​​
SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Robert Vasiluth Crusading To Save A Miracle Plant
Karl Grossman, March 13, 2024, Smithtown Matters
The inventive Robert (Rob) Vasiluth is moving ahead in his crusade to restore eelgrass in area waters.
“Eelgrass is the miracle plant,” says Vasiluth. “It’s vital as fish habitat. It’s a nursery ground for juvenile fish. Where it grows, scallops thrive. It slows down erosion. It neutralizes acidification. It produces oxygen. It sequesters carbon 35 times faster than a terrestrial rain forest. It is the foundation of the shallow sea.”
A Novel Approach to Eelgrass Restoration
Christopher Walsh, Feb 15, 2024, The East Hampton Star
The East Hampton Town Trustees agreed to permit a novel approach to eelgrass restoration in Napeague Harbor, and to issue an authorization letter allowing an application to the town’s water quality technical advisory committee to fund it, when the group met on Monday.
Volunteers team up to repopulate eelgrass at the bottom of Long Island Sound
Luke Hajdasz, September 2023, WSFB Hartford
(WFSB) – Eelgrass is a beneficial plant that used to be common at the bottom of Long Island Sound. But now it’s getting harder to find.
An Innovative Approach to Restoring Eelgrass
Robyn Silvestri, July 27, 2022, Save the Great South Bay
Eelgrass is an essential component of the Great South Bay’s ecosystem. Over the past decades it has been decimated due in part to Harmful Algal Blooms triggered by nitrogen pollution.
​
Carl Grossman, July 8, 2022, Fire Island & GSB News
A new way to grow eelgrass is being pursued off Barrett Beach on Fire Island. The concept is that of Robert (Rob) Vasiluth. And its development originates with 9/11.
Eelgrass Restoration in the Long Island Sound: Seed Collection
September 29, 2021, Save the Sound
Eelgrass is an important seagrass and a building block for a healthy and abundant Long Island Sound. It provides a number of important ecosystem function, including carbon capture and sequestration, shelter and foraging areas for young fish and invertebrates, food for migratory waterfowl and sea turtles, and habitat for important local species including flounder and bay scallops.