A letter to National Marine Fisheries service

Thanks to an email I received from Robert Klavins at Environment Massachusetts, I wanted to post the text of the letter a coalition of religious leaders, scientists, divers, fishermen, and many more, sent to the Director of the National Marine Fisheries Service...

Re: Comments on Proposed National Standard 1 Regulations and Guidance

Dear Dr. Hogarth:

Our organizations represent over nine million Americans who are concerned about the health of our ocean, its fish, marine mammals like whales, dolphins and porpoises, and sea turtles. We are scientists, religious leaders and congregations, scuba divers, business leaders, recreational fishermen, fishing related businesses, environmental organizations, students, ecotourism providers, beach goers, and tourism organizations, united in our concern for healthy oceans and fish populations. We were pleased at the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 2006 (MSA) because it gave us hope that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Regional Fishery Management Councils would manage the public’s fishery resources in much better ways.

It is now incumbent on all of us --citizens, fishermen, scientists, and business people-- who want healthier oceans and fish to put that good law to work on the water, in fishing boats and at regional fishery management council meetings. First, we are pleased by the conservation oriented tone of your public statements and those of others in the Bush administration about the issue of ending overfishing. This indicates a true appreciation of the tough problems that our fisheries face today and a willingness to challenge ‘business as usual’ in the management of fisheries.

We believe that National Standard 1 guidance should make the following changes in the way that your agency and regional councils conduct business. Specifically:

· The independent science committees on each council should set science based annual catch limits that incorporate a precautionary approach or buffers to keep actual catch below the level of overfishing with a high percentage of certainty. NMFS and the regional councils cannot continue the practice of managing up to the edge of what’s theoretically sustainable without breaking the law that bans overfishing. There is too much uncertainty in the ocean about how many fish are really out there and how well they are reproducing and growing to allow for that approach.

· Fishery managers should create clear, equitable, and consistent accountability measures that keep fish stocks out of trouble if annual catch limits are exceeded. Penalties or compensatory action for going over the annual catch limit should be done immediately (ie., in season’) or no later than the next year. Accurate, timely reporting and aggregation of total catch from all sectors (commercial, charter, and recreational) is a key building block of any successful accountability system. To that end, data from each fishery should be collected as soon as possible after landing the fish. This will mean less overshooting and undershooting of annual catch limits.

· You must preserve full environmental reviews and opportunity for public comments on fishery management plans. Preparing environmental reviews and fishery plans can and should be done in a smooth, useful, coordinated fashion.

In sum, we are very pleased with the proposals that NMFS has considered so far in revising the NS1. We hope to see as many of these good ideas embedded in the final regulations and guidance as possible. We have a unique opportunity to make a quantum advance in the way we manage our fisheries. As you know, that opportunity only comes along once every decade. Let’s make that quantum advance and guarantee healthier oceans for all.

Thank you,

Religious Organizations

Rev. Roger Burkhart, Reverand

Spirituality and Earth Stewardship Committee of the New Hampshire Conference of the United Church of Christ

Gareth Evans, Rector

St. John's Episcopalian Church, Charlestown, MA

Stephen T. Ayres, Vicar

Old North Episcopalian Church

Boston, MA

Environment Group of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Medford

Medford, MA

Jenny Fleming –Ives

Environmental Task Force of the Hampshire Interfaith Council

Northampton, MA

Religious Leaders (as individuals)

Pastor Sarah J. Anderson, Pastor

Christ the King Lutheran Church, Springfield, MA

Rev. Stephen Cook, Reverand

Unitarian Society of Northampton & Florence

Ellen Bernstein, Founder

Hebrew College

Rev. Georganne Greene, Reverand

Unitarian Universalist Society of Greater Springfield, Springfield, MA

Recreational Groups

David Prescott, Chairman

Surfrider Foundation, Rhode Island Chapter

Andrew Krupa, Chairman

Surfrider Foundation, Connecticut Chaper

Jenny Miller Garmendia, Director

Project AWARE Foundation

Heather L. Knowles, Captain

North Atlantic Dive Expeditions, Inc., Beverly, MA

Jason Schrwratwiesler, Conservation Director

International Game Fish Association, Dania Beach, FL

Roy Chamberlain, Vice President

South Shore Neptunes Dive Club, Marshfield, MA

Scientists

Dr. Manuel A. Morales Williams College Dr. Joan Edwards Williams College Dr. Timothy Downs Clark University Dr. Halina Brown Clark University Dr. Mark McMenamin Mt. Holyoke Dr. Jody Emel Clark University Dr. Jennie C. Stephens Clark University Dr. Curtice R. Griffin UMASS Amherst Dr. Guy Lanza UMASS Amherst Dr. Maria Rodrigues Holy Cross Dr. Boyd Kynard UMASS Amherst Dr. Buzz Hoagland Westfield State College Dr. Theresa McBride Holy Cross Dr. John T. Finn UMASS Amherst Dr. Paulette M. Peckol Smith College Dr. Robert Bertin Holy Cross Dr. Rob Goble Clark University

Environmental Groups:

Frank Gorke, Director,

Environment Massachusetts

Boston, MA

Matt Rand, Director,

Conserve Our Ocean Legacy Campaign, Washington, DC

Gerry Leape, Vice president,

Marine Conservation, National Environmental Trust, Washington, DC

Peg Harrington, New England Representative,

Conserve Our Ocean Legacy Campaign, Salem, MA

Norris McDonald, President,

African American Environmentalist Association

Erika Staaf, Advocate

Environment New Hampshire

Matt Auten, Advocate

Environment Rhode Island

Renata von Tscharner, President & Founder

The Charles River Conservancy

Cambridge, MA

Michelle Hohensee, Administrative Coordinator

Save Our Shores

Charlie Lord, Executive Director

Urban Ecology Institute, Chestnut Hill, MA

Julie Crockford, President

Emerald Necklace Conservancy, Brookline, MA

Paul G. Johnson, President and Chairman of the Board

Reef Relief,

Mike Hanauer

Massachusetts Environmentalists for Sustainable Population

Lauren Finan

REEF Environmental Education Foundation

Pine DuBois, Executive Director

Jones River Watershed Association, Kingston, MA

Bill Mott, Director

The Ocean Project

Jim Bourque, Regional Campaign Director

Earthshare

Community Leaders (as individuals)

Sue Sutter, Boston, MA

Lonna Maratty, Cape Neddick, ME

Lori Tsuruda, Founder

People Making a Difference, Boston, MA

Student Groups

Amanda O’Brien, President

Husky Environmental Action Team, Boston, MA

Lani Gedeon

Sierra Club, Hampshire College Chapter, Amherst, MA

Emily Lewis, Co-President

Students for Environmental Action, Northeastern University

Boston, MA

BU Organic Gardening Club, Boston, MA

Business Leaders (as individuals)

Gib Chase,

Eco Consultants, International

Tedi Dickinson

Earth Economics

Elena Saporta

American Society of Landscape Architects, Cambridge, MA

Other Organizations

Mike Gravitz, Oceans Advocate

USPIRG, Washington, DC

Sharon B. Young, Marine Issues Field Director
The Humane Society of the U.S.

Diane Buccheri, Publisher

OCEAN Magazine

Walrus threat as ice melts

October 08, 2007 12:00am

THOUSANDS of walruses have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.

Alaska's walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and autumn are usually found on the Arctic ice pack.

But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas.

Walrus feed on clams, snails and other bottom dwellers. Given the choice between an ice platform over water beyond their 192-metre diving range or gathering spots on shore, thousands of walruses chose Alaska's rocky beaches.

"It looks to me like animals are shifting their distribution to find prey," said Tim Ragen, the executive director of the federal Marine Mammal Commission.

"The big question is whether they will be able to find sufficient prey in areas where they are looking."

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre at the University of Colorado at Boulder, September sea ice was 39 per cent below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.

Sea ice cover was in a downward spiral and might have passed the point of no return, with a possible ice-free Arctic Ocean by northern summer 2030, senior scientist Mark Serreze said.

Starting in July, several thousand walruses abandoned the ice pack.

The immediate concern of new, massive walrus groups for the US Fish and Wildlife Service is danger to the animals from stampedes.

Longer term, biologists fear walrus will suffer nutritional stress if they are concentrated on shoreline rather than spread over thousands of kilometres of sea ice.

- AP

This has been the case for some time and the alarming trend appears as if it will continue. There have been numerous science articles on this subject. A more recent text is from Science entitled: A major ecosystem shift in the North Bering Sea.

Whaling made penguins switch to krill

This article from Nature is pretty interesting... check out the whole thing here.


Ancient eggshell fragments show that Adélie penguins living in Antarctica switched from eating fish to krill around the time that humans began hunting seals and whales. The finding suggests that when humans removed krill-eating predators the penguins exploited the resulting shrimp surplus. Steven Emslie of the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, and William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, analysed more than 220 fossil eggshell pieces ranging from 100 to 38,000 years old, and compared them with samples from modern nests. By comparing the proportion of certain forms of carbon and nitrogen in the shells with the proportions found in fish and krill, the researchers could tell what the birds had been eating. Emslie expected to find changes in diet matching climate change. Instead, the penguin menu remained biased towards fish until about 200 years ago, when the birds switched to krill. Recent global warming and the rise in krill fisheries has reduced krill stocks and could be contributing to the decline in Adélie penguin populations on the Antarctic Peninsula, says Emslie. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences¹. Dietary switch From 1793 to 1807, an estimated 3.2 million seals were taken from the Southern Ocean. The resulting crash in the seal population — including the Antarctic fur seal Arctocephalus gazella, which fed primarily on krill — caused the industry to collapse.

This implies a huge dietary response. Keith Hobson, Canadian Wildlife Service, Saskatchewan.

Whaling took off in the 1800s and continued until the mid-twentieth century, eventually depleting baleen whale populations by more than 90%. It's estimated that the combined harvest of seals and whales resulted in more than 150 million tonnes of extra krill each year. Krill is an attractive food for penguins because it is high in protein and tends to travel in swarms. "The birds can capture lots of high-energy prey in a short time," says Emslie. "This implies a huge ecological dietary response by the penguins in relation to some change in their environment," says Keith Hobson of the Canadian Wildlife Service in Saskatchewan. But the reasons behind this switch are less obvious, he says. "Abundance of a secondary food item does not necessarily explain this unless it was accompanied by a reduction in fish," says Hobson. "Why does it matter that krill became more abundant to a predator that previously happily made eggs from fish?"

Tiger Sharks Keep Seagrass Tidy

So I have heard of this before, and haven't actually seen the scientific article, but this is pretty cool none-the-less, from Discovery news. I thought when I had heard about this through the grapevine, it was sea turtle grazing that tiger sharks were controlling, but dugongs also makes sense, plus they can have a higher grazing impact. This article is a couple months after an article in nature about shark fishing leading to higher skate and ray populations that could be devastating to benthic shellfish populations. You can read about that article here, although it isn't the actual Nature article. Both show the importance of large apex predators on coastal ecosystems and gives credence to those who want to try and shut down shark fishing tournaments.

July 11, 2007 — Australian tiger sharks keep a tidy lawn for their marine neighbors by controlling where local herbivores can nibble, according to a study published in the current issue of Animal Behavior.

The discovery adds to the growing list of ways in which sharks benefit ecosystems worldwide. In seagrass communities in particular, countless other creatures depend on the presence of sharks.

"Seagrasses form the foundation for many near-shore marine ecosystems," lead author Aaron Wirsing told Discovery News. This is the case in Western Australia's Shark Bay, where seagrass is "nourishing and sheltering a host of invertebrates and fishes that, in turn, support top predators like sharks."

Wirsing, a researcher in the Department of Biological Sciences at Simon Fraser University, and his colleagues studied how the presence of tiger sharks specifically affected the feedings of dugongs — large aquatic mammals that somewhat resemble their manatee relatives.

Dugongs spend much of their day chewing on seagrass.

Through catch, tag and release methods, the scientists calculated tiger shark predation rates on dugongs.

Working under the auspices of the Shark Bay Ecosystem Research Project with funding from the National Geographic's Expeditions Council, the researchers focused their efforts on tiger sharks at least 10 feet long. Only adults that size are large enough to take on a chunky dugong.

The gentle herbivores prefer to eat segrass in the middle of patches. Growth is lush there and packs more of a nutritional punch due to the presence of extra organic carbon. Escaping from hungry sharks is difficult from these interior areas, however.

Wirsing and his team found that when large tiger sharks were around, dugongs instead chose to feed around seagrass meadow edges. The grass is not as tasty or nutritious at the edges, but the location allows escape to deeper water if predators are near.

By indirectly controlling where dugongs feed, tiger sharks keep the seagrass mowed down at all areas.

"Dugong grazing can certainly hold seagrass growth in check," Wirsing explained.

If left unchecked, however, the herbivores would simply eat all of the seagrass.

"That's where tiger sharks come in," Wirsing explained.

Both tiger shark and dugong populations are at dangerous lows in many places, because of human influence.

People often fear tiger sharks, since they have attacked people in the past, but George Burgess, director of the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File, attributes the attacks to tourist recklessness. He said tourists may often "bring their aquatic recreation to places known to be sharky without asking natives about good and bad places."

World Conservation Society biologist Tim Davenport said the dugong situation is just as bad. He explained that "dugongs are now critically endangered" in certain regions, such as in Tanzanian waters, primarily due to a combination of fishing net entanglement and habitat destruction.

Thousands of rubber ducks to land on British shores after 15 year journey

This article is out of the Daily Mail, a British newspaper. This is pretty cool, knowing where this cargo of rubber duckies was lost, knowing how long each one took to reach their destinations, allows oceanographers to cheaply learn alot about ocean currents. Nice!


They were toys destined only to bob up and down in nothing bigger than a child's bath - but so far they have floated halfway around the world.

The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago.

Since then they have travelled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.

And now they are heading straight for Britain. At some point this summer they are expected to be spotted on beaches in South-West England.

While the ducks are undoubtedly a loss to the bath-time fun of thousands of children, their adventures at sea have proved an innvaluable aid to science.

Scroll down for more

The toys have helped researchers to chart the great ocean currents because when they are spotted bobbing on the waves they are much more likely to be reported to the authorities than the floats which scientists normally use.

And because the toys are made of durable plastic and are sealed watertight, they have been able to survive years adrift at the mercy of the elements.

Boxes of the bathtime toys - made in China for the U.S. firm The First Years Inc - were washed overboard in the eastern Pacific Ocean one stormy January night in 1992 and broke open.

In the intervening time an oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, has devoted his retirement to tracking the little yellow ducks and their friends over 17,000 miles, and it is he who has predicted that this summer they will land in the

West of England. Mr Ebbesmeyer said: 'We're getting reports of ducks being washed up on America's eastern seaboard.

"It is now inevitable that they will get caught up in the Atlantic currents and will turn up on English beaches.

"Cornwall and the South-West will probably get the first wave of them."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking the floating plastic ducks around the world's oceans

Mr Ebbesmeyer said the toys will be easy for British beachboardcombers to spot because they have largely faded to white and have the words "The First Years" stamped upon them.

George Bush Snr was still US President when the toys from The First Years Inc. were made in China, packed into a container and put on a ship for the US.

But after falling overboard, the sea water corroded the card-packaging and the toys floated free. They circled the northern Pacific once before being washed up on the Alaskan shore, then all down the West coast of Canada and the US.

Mr Ebbesmeyer saw immediately how valuable the little toys would be to scientific research of the great ocean currents, the engine of the planet's entire climate.

He correctly predicted what many thought was impossible - that thousands of them would end up washed into the Arctic ice near Alaska, and then move at a mile a day, frozen in the pack ice, around their very own North-West Passage to the Atlantic.

It proved true years later and in 2003, the first "Friendly Floatees" were found, frozen and then thawed out, on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada.

So precious to science are they that the US firm that made them is offering a £50 bounty for finding one.

THE JOURNEY SO FAR:

10 JANUARY 1992: Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean nearly 29,000 First Years bath toys, including bright yellow rubber ducks, are spilled from a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean.

16 NOVEMBER 1992: Caught in the Subpolar Gyre (counter-clockwise ocean current in the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Siberia), the ducks take 10 months to begin landing on the shores of Alaska.

EARLY 1995: The ducks take three years to circle around. East from the drop site to Alaska, then west and south to Japan before turning back north and east passing the original drop site and again landing in North America. Some ducks are even found In Hawaii. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) worked out that the ducks travel approximately 50 per pent faster than the water in the current.

1995 - 2000: Some intrepid ducks escape the Subpolar Gyre and head North, through the Bering Straight and into the frozen waters of the Arctic. Frozen into the ice the ducks travel slowly across the pole, moving ever eastward.

2000: Ducks begin reaching the North Atlantic where they begin to thaw and move Southward. Soon ducks are sighted bobbing in the waves from Maine to Massachusetts.

2001: Ducks are tracked in the area where the Titanic sank.

JULY TO DECEMBER 2003: The First Years company offers a $100 savings bond reward for the recovery of wayward ducks from the 1992 spill. To be valid ducks must be sent to the company and must be found in New England, Canada or Iceland. Britain is told to prepare for an invasion of the wayward ducks as well.

2003: A lawyer called Sonali Naik was on holiday in the Hebrides in north-west Scotland when she found a faded green frog on the beach marked with the magic words 'The First Years'. Unaware of the significance of her find she left it on the beach. It was only when she was chatting to other guests at her hotel that she realised what she had seen.

Shark Bite Leads to Reproduction Mystery

Parthenogenesis, the ability of females of some species able to reproduce without the help of male sperm. This feat which is seen in insects, some reptiles and fish may now have been documented twice in shark species. This is amazing. All because a female shark bit an aquarium curator, reacted badly to sedatives and was dissected to find a nearly ready to be born pup in the uterus in a tank without any males of the species. Imagine how many sharks in the wild might have been born to only one mother?
Read the article here.

Algae Biodiesel May Soon Be Reality

By Green Options Blogger Clayton Bodie Cornell. Originally published May 24, 2007.

The biodiesel community has always been marked by spirited enthusiasm, a clear sense of mission, and the dream that biodiesel could one day play a significant role in our energy future. That dream may soon be a reality. Researchers at Utah State University say that farming algae, with reported oil yields of 10,000 gallons per acre, could become an economically feasible biodiesel feedstock by the end of the decade.

This is the Holy Grail of biodiesel: an oil source that could make a serious dent in our fossil fuel consumption. Our most productive feedstock today, the oil palm, doesn’t even come close with yields of 635 gallons/acre, and is followed distantly by the U.S. standard, soy, at 48 gallons of oil/acre.

Producing biodiesel from algae isn’t a new concept, and it’s easy to see why: algae grow voraciously (measured by the day), algae can proliferate in heinous growing conditions (saltwater or extreme temperatures), and certain species contain up to 60% oil (by weight).

Put quite simply, microalgae are remarkable and efficient biological factories capable of taking a waste (zero-energy) form of carbon (CO2) and converting it into a high density liquid form of energy (natural oil). This ability has been the foundation of the research program funded by the Office Fuels Development.”

Between 1978 and 1996, the Department of Energy (DOE) funded research into technologies that could have significant impacts on the consumption of fossil fuels. The focus of this research became the Aquatic Species Program (ASP), which investigated renewable fuel production (biodiesel) from high-oil algae species, fed by the waste CO2 from coal-fired plants. Researchers whittled down over 3,000 strains of microorganisms into the most productive 300, and constructed 1000 sq. meter test ponds outside of Roswell, NM. The ponds were set up as sort of algae ‘race-tracks’, where algae were circulated around shallow, oval-shaped ponds as carbon dioxide bubbled through the mixture. Results were successful and encouraging, but the program fizzled out after almost 2 decades (a lot of which had to do with a budget crunch and allocating more resources to researching ethanol). Researchers noted that one obstacle to large-scale algae production may be the high cost, which was estimated to be double the price of diesel at the time. (I wonder what they would say now.)

Utah State may finally take this research to the next level. Scientists there plan to produce algae in a grid of indoor bioreactors, with light captured by parabolic dishes on the roof and fed inside via fiber-optic cables. Put several thousand of these bioreactors together and you have an algae farm:

The solar bioreactor utilizes single cell algae, nature’s most efficient means to convert sunshine to biomass, which contain up to 60% oil by weight.[4] To minimize land and water resources, an enclosed bioreactor is used to grow algae on proprietary vertical membranes that resemble library newspaper racks. Harvesting of algae is achieved by periodically flushing water down the membrane from holes in the top ‘rack’. Mature algae are dislodged and collected in a bottom trough while immature algae cling to the membrane and continue to grow. Sunlight is collected and distributed to vertical panels that are sandwiched in close proximity between the growth membranes, much like alternating plates in a car battery. Oil extracted from mature algae can be converted to biodiesel using well established technologies.”

The program has been funded by $6 million in seed money from the Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative, and plans on building the first commercial plant in Utah. USU researchers say algae-biodiesel could become economically feasible by 2009.

Needless to say, this is an exciting project that I will be watching closely.

WHAT!!!! They have to be joking...

I agree with the airplane banner, THOU SHALT NOT LIE

By Andrea Hopkins

PETERSBURG, Ky (Reuters) - Like many modern museums, the newest U.S. tourist attraction includes some awesome exhibits -- roaring dinosaurs and a life-sized ship.

But only at the Creation Museum in Kentucky do the dinosaurs sail on the ship -- Noah's Ark, to be precise.

The Christian creators of the sprawling museum, unveiled on Saturday, hope to draw as many as half a million people each year to their state-of-the-art project, which depicts the Bible's first book, Genesis, as literal truth.

While the $27 million museum near Cincinnati has drawn snickers from media and condemnation from U.S. scientists, those who believe God created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago say their views are finally being represented.

"What we've done here is to give people an opportunity to hear information that is not readily available ... to challenge them that really you can believe the Bible's history," said Ken Ham, president of the group Answers in Genesis that founded the museum.

Here exhibits show the Grand Canyon took just days to form during Noah's flood, dinosaurs coexisted with humans and had a place on Noah's Ark, and Cain married his sister to people the earth, among other Biblical wonders.

Scientists, secularists and moderate Christians have pledged to protest the museum's public opening on Monday. An airplane trailing a "Thou Shalt Not Lie" banner buzzed overhead during the museum's opening news conference.

Opponents argue that children who see the exhibits will be confused when they learn in school that the universe is 14 billion years old rather than 6,000.

"Teachers don't deserve a student coming into class saying 'Gee Mrs. Brown, I went to this fancy museum and it said you're teaching me a lie,"' Dr. Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, told reporters before the museum opened.

A Gallup poll last year showed almost half of Americans believe that humans did not evolve but were created by God in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

Three of 10 Republican presidential candidates said in a recent debate that they did not believe in evolution.

My reseach

Just wanted give a little background information on my proposed research

Estuaries in Long Island, New York, have been documented as some of the most productive in terms of both primary production and shellfish harvest (COSMA 1985). Bay scallops, Argopecten irradians, once supported a vibrant fishery that contributed to high productivity in Long Island waters. Scallop populations crashed in 1985 after the occurrence of the first brown tide, Aureococcus anophagefferens, in the Peconic Bays, and subsequent blooms pushed scallops to the brink of extinction (Tettelbach and Wenczel 1993). Reseeding efforts commenced after the blooms with relatively little success (Tettelbach and Wenczel 1993). One potential reason for the lack of recovery was the low densities of spawning adults, as numbers of adult scallops in the Peconics has rarely been over 0.5 animals/m² over the last 10 years (Lewis and Rivara 1998). Competition and intense predation may be contributing recovery failure, but I hypothesize that the major contributing factor is loss of habitat. Low survival leads to low densities of adults, and scallop survival has been most often linked with predation (Tettelbach 1986; Prescott 1990; Tettelbach, Smith et al. 1997). Also, predation rates are much lower in vegetated habitats when compared to bare sand (Prescott 1990; Tettelbach, Smith et al. 1997). Locally, bay scallops preferred habitat is eelgrass, Zostera marina, an association that has long been recognized (Belding 1910; Gustell 1930),and examined in multiple studies (Pohle, Bricelj et al. 1991; Garcia-Esquivel and Bricelj 1993). The same brown tide blooms that caused the scallop population to crash also shaded out eelgrass (Dennison 1987). High nutrient loads from increasing development of the East End of Long Island can also lead to eutrophication, which has devastating impacts on eelgrass (Dennison, Orth et al. 1993) and leads to dense macroalgal blooms (Valiela, Foreman et al. 1992). Fishing gear directly removes eelgrass biomass (Boese 2002). The aforementioned factors have led to current Zostera beds in eastern Long Island to exist as a mosaic of patches that vary in shape, size, and degree of isolation from other patches. Habitat patch size can significantly affect recruitment (Bologna and Heck 2000) and survival (Irlandi, Ambrose et al. 1995) of marine bivalves. Furthermore, a regime shift from an eelgrass dominated system to a macroalgal dominated system can potentially be detrimental to bay scallops (Valiela et al 1992). The relative value of different juvenile scallop habitats has received little attention, and few studies have examined the role that changing eelgrass patch architecture (ie, size, shape) has in scallop recruitment, growth and survival. Understanding how changes in Peconic basin habitats may affect bay scallops is paramount for their successful restoration and recovery efforts.

I plan to build artificial seagrass units (ASU) of two different shapes and sizes, replicated in triplicate, using Vexar mesh and polypropylene ribbon. I am using ASUs to correct for confounding variables like shoot density, canopy height, etc. ASUs have been used in previous studies (Bologna and Heck 2000). I will be able to test recruitment, growth and survival of scallops within these patches. Also, in field experiments I will test survival in different habitat types, eelgrass, codium, mixed macroalgal communities, crepidula, and bare sand. Eventually I also plan to conduct a diver benthic survey throughout the Peconics for submerged aquatic vegetation using the Braun-Blanquet method to determine whether or not there are suitable habitats for restoration, and present the results to Suffolk County, Easthampton Township and Southold Township.

Belding, D. (1910). A report upon the scallop fishery of Massachusettes. Boston, The Commonwealth of Massachusettes.

Boese, B. (2002). "Effects of recreational clam harvesting on eelgrass (Zostera marina) and associated infaunal invertebrates: in situ manipulative experiments." Aquatic Botany 73: 63-74.

Bologna, P. and K. Heck (2000). "Impacts of seagrass habitat architecture on bivalve settlement." Estuaries 23: 449-457.

COSMA (1985). Suffolk County's hard clam industry: an overview and an analysis of management alternatives, MSRC SUNY Stony Brook.

Dennison, W. (1987). "Brown tide" algal blooms shade out eelgrass. National Shellfish Association, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Dennison, W., R. Orth, et al. (1993). "Assessing water quality with submerged aquatic vegetation-Habitat requirements as barometers of Chesapeake Bay health." Bioscience 43: 86-94.

Garcia-Esquivel, Z. and V. Bricelj (1993). "Ontogenetic changes in microhabitat distribution of juvenile bay scallops, Argopecten irradians irradians (L.), in eelgrass beds, and their potential significance to early recruitment." Biological Bulletin 185: 42-55.

Gustell, J. (1930). "Natural history of the bay scallop." US Bureau of Fisheries Bulletin 46: 569-632.

Irlandi, E., W. Ambrose, et al. (1995). "Landscape ecology and the marine environment: how spatial conifguration of seagrass habitat influences growth and survival of the bay scallop." Oikos 72: 307-313.

Lewis, D. and G. Rivara (1998). An assessment of shellfish resources in the tributatires and embayments of the Peconic Estuary, Cornell Cooperative Extension. Peconic Estuary Program.

Pohle, D., V. Bricelj, et al. (1991). "The eelgrass canopy: an above-bottom refuge from benthic predators for juveinle bay scallops Argopecten irradians." Marine Ecology Progress Series 74: 47-59.

Prescott, R. (1990). "Sources of predatory mortality in the bay scallop Argopecten irradians (Lamark): Interactions with seagrass and epibiotic coverage." Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 144: 63-83.

Tettelbach, S. (1986). Dynamics of crustacean predation on the northern bay scallop, Argopecten irradians, University of Connecticut.

Tettelbach, S., C. Smith, et al. (1997). "Bay scallop stock restoration efforts in Long Island, New York: approaches and recommendations." Journal of Shellfish Research 16: 276.

Tettelbach, S. and P. Wenczel (1993). "Reseeding efforts and the status of the bay scallop Argopecten irradians (Lamark 1819) populations in New York following the occurence of "brown tide" algal blooms." Journal of Shellfish Research 18: 423-431.

Valiela, I., K. Foreman, et al. (1992). "Couplings of watersheds and coastal waters: Sources and consequences of nutirent enrichment in Waquoit Bay, Massachusettes." Estuaries 15(4): 443-457.

Shellfisherman to search new spot for oysters, clams

Some local Long Island issues, courtest the Greenwich Time

By Michael Dinan
Staff Writer

Published March 27 2007

After more than 200 years of sifting Long Island Sound's sandy floor from canoes, skipjacks, steam engines and trawlers, shellfishermen say they've figured out which areas yield the meatiest, most abundant oyster and clam crops.

The prized underwater beds are privately owned or leased from the state Department of Agriculture, and are sold from generation to generation of shellfisherman.

So its rare for a shellfisherman to do what Greenwich's Jardar Nygaard is proposing--seek to farm unclaimed and unproven acreage.

"There's a risk. There is absolutely a risk involved, but you're making an informed decision when you do this," said Nygaard, owner of Fjord Fisheries seafood shop in Cos Cob. "You're going to be right to some extent and you really just risk what you feel it's worth."

Nygaard is seeking to lease two plots in the Sound, totaling about 183 acres and located a few thousand feet southeast of Greenwich Point. To farm the plots, Nygaard checked with the agriculture department's Milford-based Aquaculture Bureau to make sure the sites are available. The bureau then advertised Nygaard's intentions and called for bids to lease the property.

Bids must be at least $4 per acre per year and are due Monday. If he wins the leases, Nygaard said, he intends to start farming the plots right away, with a goal of selling clams.

What he's doing is highly unusual in the world of shellfishing, said David Carey, the bureau's director.

"The leases are automatically renewed at the choice of the lessee, if he meets the terms and conditions. That's why we only get about 10 new applications a year," Carey said."You'd think that shellfishermen, between (the year) 1800 and last year, have pretty much picked out the best areas."

But the Sound has a way of surprising shellfishermen who think they've mastered the practice, said Ed Stilwagen, who works about 3,000 acres in the Sound as owner of Byram River-based Atlantic Clam Farms.

"If you're around a while you find out where the good spots are, but it changes based on the current and other conditions. It's not a totally consistent thing at all," Stilwagen said. "There's a lot of luck involved. Sometimes it's better to be in some areas than others, for reasons we don't even know about."

Even so, state officials give potential shellfishermen some time to survey the shellfishing beds they intend to lease. Under a one-day permit issued by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Ny gaard spent several hours on his hydraulic dredge last week, surveying about four of the acres he's interested in.

Nygaard, who already leases 50 acres in Greenwich and 220 in Westport, believes that eddying at high and low tides could help seeds take hold in the beds and yield shellfish in the proposed sites.

"Also, during storms, it could create large amounts of shell deposit, which is also a good environment," Nygaard said.

Still, the proposed beds --–one of which lies entirely in Greenwich, while the other straddles the Greenwich-Stamford line --–could be difficult to manage, Nygaard said. Depths vary widely from place to place and waters can be choppy most days, which makes it difficult to do the sensitive work of trawling the bottom of the Sound for clams, Nygaard said.

For Leslie Miklovich, co-owner of Hillard Bloom Shellfish in Norwalk, the only true gauge for how fertile an area is for shellfishing is history itself.

"Historically we know which grounds are the best," said Miklovich, whose business farms about 10,000 acres in the Sound and whose family has been in shellfishing since 1875. "Just history from the old-timers, that's what it's about. Over the years, everything has been tried. All these grounds have been tried before."

For Nygaard, who has long been interested in aquaculture and whose family went into salmon farming years ago, trying to find a good shellfishing crop where no one has before may offer its own rewards.

"I just think that cultivation of shellfish is a good business to be in," Nygaard said. "For one thing, it's sustainable, and basically eco-friendly."