DEI’s work was the subject of many presentations at the 2018 Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport, March 1-3. On “Shellfish Focus Day”, March 1, DEI presented information in the Applied Marine Research: Intertidal Ecosystems block of the agenda. Leading the way was Director of Research Dr. Brian Beal’s presentation sharing discoveries on the timing of clam and crab settlement. This groundbreaking work was part of DEI’s 4-year study of the decline of shellfish populations in Casco Bay, and the discoveries were made by a staggered deployment of DEI’s clam recruitment boxes. Another presentation, titled, Timing and Spatial Variability in soft-shell clams and green crab recruitment in the Harraseeket River, Freeport, built upon DEI’s prior clam recruitment fieldwork in 2015 and 2016 and identified the time of year and temperature clams and crabs settle.
Prior to that presentation, DEI’s Associate Director Sara Randall gave a talk about The Myth of “Dead Mud: Using Shellfish Recruitment Boxes to Reveal Current Clam Productivity and Information about the Intertidal Ecosystem which demonstrated how recruitment boxes reveal crucial information about the marine ecosystem and how that information can be used to inform clam management.
Then Bailey Bowden, Chair of the Penobscot Shellfish Committee, presented Where’d the clams go? A Mya Arenaria Recruitment Field Study of Northern Bay 2017, which detailed findings from one year of clam recruitment studies in Northern Bay. Additionally, Searsport High School science students presented their clam recruitment studies from sites in Searsport and Stockton Springs.
Research Assistant Kyle Pepperman presented the results from his clam protection projects in six eastern Mane towns in a talk entitled Community Clam Culture in Eastern Maine.
In addition, Sara Randall presented a brief overview of the biology of green crabs and DEI’s previous work in trapping green crabs in a talk called Green Crabs in Maine: The Invasion is Over and the Occupation is Underway on a March 3rd session about developing an economically viable green crab fishery in Maine.
