A collaboration between the Town of Gouldsboro, Schoodic Institute, and RSU-24 that grew out of Downeast Institute’s three-year community clam culturing project is an informative, inspiring story of building resilience in a fishery and a community.
Sumner Memorial High School students from the Marine Pathways program assessed clam recruitment, cultured clam growth rates, and predation levels during the clam growing season at different Gouldsboro clam flats and presented the data to the town’s Shellfish Conservation Committee to assist with clam management. This work led to the concept of building a community facility, modeled after Downeast Institute, to revitalize the region’s clam fishery by spawning and growing juvenile seed clams to restore intertidal habitat.
Partners include the Schoodic Institute, the town of Gouldsboro and Gouldsboro Shellfish Conservation Committee, Shellfish Warden Mike Pinkham, Dana Rice, Sumner Memorial High School, and College of the Atlantic.
Special thanks to Director Tate Yoder and Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries for documenting the story through film.
