Laura Fabrizio of Moriches Bay Project: Cleaning Water with Shellfish

Some people can see a problem, but overlook it. Others see it, but aren’t moved to do anything about it. A special few see a problem and make the conscious decision to make a difference.

Laura Fabrizio, Aram Terchunian and Dwight Surgan fall squarely into the third group. They are the cofounders of the Moriches Bay Project, whose goal is to return Moriches Bay to the beautiful body of water of Fabrizio and Terchunian’s youth. This unlikely team changed the course of their lives and of the area when they decided to found the project, which farms oysters and clams in Moriches Bay. They don’t eat or sell them; they grow them to filter the water.

“Just today we put 600,000 baby oysters into our FLUPSYs (a floating open-water system that protects the oysters), and we’re not done yet,” says Fabrizio, who is owner of Coastal Concierge Management, which provides a range of services tvisitors to The Hamptons. A former senior vice president for J. Crew, Fabrizio says her work with the Moriches Bay Project is what gave her the courage to leave J. Crew and start her own business. “I went from high heels and pencil skirts to being covered in muck. If I could do that, I could do anything.”

And she does pretty much anything for her Coastal Concierge Management clients.

“My goal is to make sure that the experience my clients have creates memories to last a lifetime,” says Fabrizio, who laughs that her day can range from delivering the perfect tomato for a lunch to arranging a beach dinner for 60 or more. She could be servicing an HVAC system or arranging maid service or cat sitting. If it needs doing, she knows who to talk to, hire or cajole to get it done. This is a vital skill to have when you’re running a not-for-profit organization, especially one with as unusual a concept as is the Moriches Bay Project — to use mollusks to clean the water naturally.

Although her mucking days aren’t completely behind her, she now does more connecting the dots to keep everything on track. This includes working with the team at the beginning of the season to get ready for the oyster seedlings, making sure the season and process is going smoothly and coordinating transplanting the oysters into the bay, plus planning events and paying bills. This is all while flawlessly taking care of the wishes and whims of Coastal Concierge clients.

“The team at the Moriches Bay Project has become a family, this team is committed and hardworking I could not be prouder,” she says.

Surgan is the head scientist and manages and oversees all the farms and FLUPSYs. He, along with a few others, are the ones who get in the muck every week, working tirelessly to raise their oysters.

“Our goal is to keep increasing the number of oysters and clams that we put into the bay,” says Fabrizio, who lives right on the water in West Hampton Dunes. She purchased the home that her father owned and she grew up in. “A single adult oyster can filter 50 gallons of water a day. We have enough oysters in the bay to filter roughly 35 million gallons a day.”

Even more than when talking about the millions of gallons of water being filtered each day, you can hear the pride in her voice when she talks about the fact that the oysters are breeding. Yes, they are observing little baby oysters clinging to shells underwater. While nearly all of the organization’s workers are volunteers, there are a few paid workers. She’s proud to say that more than 90% of the money raised for the Moriches Bay Project goes back into the water. Looking back, it’s hard to imagine than an organization birthed over slices of pizza with friends only seeded 8,000 oysters in its first year in 2012.

She is quick to share the credit for their success with her partner Terchunian and the rest of the team “When we started, the bay needed our help,” Fabrizio says of the murky water that often contained dying fish and plant life. “Aram and I are the headstrong ones. Dwight is the doer, and in the early days the muscle.”

That muscle was needed, as the apparatus and the cages for the oysters can weigh as much as 100 pounds each as the oysters mature. Luckily, clams can be seeded directly into the water. Today, they have multiple garden sites and around 30 people who work or volunteer their time.

“I’d like to think that we’ve touched and made a lot of people aware of what we do and how important it is,” Fabrizio says of what she estimates is thousands who know about the Moriches Bay Project. In addition to others reaching out to them, the organization performs outreach to schools, organizations and businesses.

“I think the biggest thing we contribute is awareness,” Fabrizio says of the impact the effort has had. This year, the nonprofit will be close to 750,000 oysters seeded since inception, with a goal of more in the future. “We have a lot of people in the organization who do a lot of good. I just think some people have the time to give, and others can support financially. We’re happy to accept both. We like to say we’re a small, grassroots organization with a lot of determination and a big heart.”

Todd Shapiro is an award-winning publicist and associate publisher of Dan’s Papers.