Seatuck Environmental Association is preparing to host its largest public fundraiser of the year, Bats & Brews, expecting about 500 guests on Saturday, Oct. 18, at the Scully Estate in Islip. The 16th annual event combines craft beer, local cuisine and live music in a casual, rain-or-shine setting to support the organization’s conservation efforts.
Bats & Brews takes its name from the event’s first conservation talk, which focused on bats. The event will run from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. at 550 S. Bay Ave.
Tickets are $165 per person and can be purchased online.
“The event itself is unique. It’s not your average fundraising gala—the fact that it takes place indoors and outdoors and it’s not fancy suit and tie but very casual and relaxed. Many people tell us it’s their favorite day of the whole year,” said Carolyn Foster, development director.
The ticket price includes craft beer from 30 breweries across Long Island, Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley, as well as beer-friendly cuisine from about a dozen local restaurants. Foster said the menu offers “samplings of something for everyone,” ranging from warm raclette and locally grown oysters shucked on site to seafood, sandwiches, burritos and barbecue.
The event will open with an acoustic hour featuring folk rock artist Paris Ray, who has 14,000 followers on social media. “She’s a very popular act here on Long Island,” Foster said.
From 8 p.m. and through most of the night, That Sound Band will perform well-known rock ’n’ roll hits. Foster described the group as “a local five-piece band that covers songs people will all know and want to dance to. It’s a rock ’n’ roll band with maybe some alternative music tucked in.”
The expert lecture will focus on the American eel, a species important to Seatuck’s river restoration efforts. Presenter Katrina Rokosz, a doctoral candidate in marine science at Stony Brook University, has researched American eels in the Hudson River.
“The American eel is one of those migratory species that we monitor,” Foster said. “We’re working to monitor the situation and to do everything we can to make recommendations to make migration easier for them.”
Foster described Seatuck as a conservation group dedicated to protecting wildlife and their habitats across Long Island, including migratory shorebirds, diamondback terrapins, river otters and coyotes recolonizing the area.
The group also operates educational programs for children ages 2 to 5.
While Bats & Brews is Seatuck’s only public fundraiser of the year, Foster said the organization benefits from a “diverse stream of income that we’re grateful for that allows us to add these important conservation programs.”
For more information, visit Seatuck Environmental Association’s website.