Evaluation of Alternatives for Mecox Bay and Inlet

Mecox Bay is a valued coastal area with a variety of stakeholders located on the east end of Long Island in Southampton, NY. The Southampton Town Trustees have the responsibility and authority to make management decisions about the bay and inlet. The management of Mecox Bay has consisted of artificially cutting a channel through the natural sand spit that encloses the bay from the ocean as the Trustees determined it to be necessary. The stakeholders for this area are the private community of people who live on the waterfront, the public community that comes to the bay for recreation, the commercial fisheries that rely on the habitat primarily for shellfish such as blue crabs, oysters, and soft clams, and the ecology and environmental quality of the Mecox Bay ecosystem. The Southampton Town Trustees are challenged to protect the Mecox Bay ecosystem as a natural resource while also considering the interests of these various stakeholders. These current circumstances indicate the need for policies that take into consideration the physical morphology of the inlet, the ecology of the bay, and the social and economic characteristics of the area in order to develop adaptive ecosystem management strategies for managing Mecox Bay and Inlet.