Spat Research Takes A Leap Forward

By Phoebe Jekielek

We are lucky to be on Hurricane Island. We are lucky to be in Penobscot Bay.

We are lucky to be in Maine.

We’re lucky for many reasons, but one of my favorite reasons is all of the opportunities we have for collaboration with local aquaculturists, fishermen, resource managers and other organizations to answer locally-relevant questions. For example, we recently partnered with Dr. Carla Guenther from the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries and Dr. Caitlin Cleaver from Bates College to apply for funding to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). And guess what, we got the funding! 

Figure 1: Spat bags ready to be deployed

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is an interstate initiative that unites states along the eastern seaboard in the joint effort and shared vision to realize a sustainable and cooperatively managed fishery. Since the 1940s the Commission has served to coordinate the promotion and protection of the fishery through collaboratively overseen conservation and management practices, including through the disbursement of highly competitive grants.

Many of you are familiar with the spat collections efforts we’ve been doing around Muscle Ridge and Hurricane Island for a number of years (check out previous Research Intern Hallie Arno’s blog here). Our project is titled “Toward resolving wild sea scallop (P. magellanicus) larval spatial and temporal distribution along the Maine coast in support of developing scallop aquaculture.” The funds awarded by ASMFC support a community-based collaborative project that engages fishermen and farmers in a pilot investigation to determine patterns of larval abundance and distribution along the Maine coast.

The initiative has the goals of:

• Evaluating the variability in scallop larval supply

• Developing a low cost monitoring and data management system

• Strengthening relationships between fishermen and farmers as they team up to understand a resource upon which they both depend

• Providing authentic education experiences for high school and undergraduate students

• Determining patterns of larval abundance and distribution requires expertise from fishermen and farmers, oceanographers, marine ecologists and resource managers. 

Figure 2: Example of spat sorted from spat bags on Hurricane Island.

We worked with local scallop growers and fishermen to identify sites to deploy our spat lines in Casco, Muscongus, Jericho, and Narraguagus Bays. Each transect has ten lines deployed and each line line has 10 bags on it and a temperature logger, two lines in each transect have salinity loggers. Most of the lines were built on Hurricane Island by the Research Team and handed off to the fishermen who deployed them from their boats. All of our lines were deployed by October 1 and we’ll be retrieving this first set of lines at the end of January while deploying a whole new set to be retrieved in April. This will give us an idea of the seasonal variability of spat supply along the coast. When we retrieve them, we’ll have around 400 bags to sort through! But don’t worry, we’re working with the Eastern Maine Skippers Program and other local schools to help us sort the bags, count the baby scallops, and identify other species that settle in the bags.  

Figure 3: Map of sites with deployed spat lines for this ASMFC-funded project.

This has truly been a collaborative effort that has required communication, coordination, and lots of logistics along the entire coast. The efforts of the fishermen, farmers, researchers and managers who have been involved illustrate the commitment to a cooperative approach to research, one that integrates knowledge from all of these stakeholders with a common goal of supporting our scallop industries. Stay tuned as we approach our first spat line retrieval…there will be a lot of scallops to sort!

UPG Leader: What I have learned on Hurricane Island

By Louize Oliveira

Last year, I was part of the UPG Sustainability Leadership Program, there were nine weeks of digital training with more than 500 young people from several countries. At the end of the training, 60 young people were selected to have an experience at Hurricane Island.

I had the honor to be selected and voyage to Hurricane this summer and I would like to share some insights I had:

1. Be Kind

People around the world have been working hard to do their best. Each country, each culture, and each person is peculiar. Being kind to ourselves to be kind to others. I realized that what we need to be to others is the same we need to be with us. If you want to be more patient with others, start with yourself. Many times, we reflect our own needs on others. 

2. Honor our history

If we respect people that came before us, we will honor the journey they had to do for us to be here. Therefore, we should think about everything that some people needed to face for us to be here today. Honor is a way of respect. If we respect our past, we can build a better future, with peace, values, and consideration for the environment.

3. Think about climate change

Thinking about "climate change" is not only the responsibility of people and companies that work with environmental topics. It is a responsibility for all of us. Climate change has been transforming our environment, our economy, our business, and our life. In Hurricane Island I realized that: to honor our past, we need to think about climate change. We need to talk about this. We need to act, each one in their context, we need to act.

4. Be open

In some times, building a network looks like a professional thing. However, this is not true. Being open to meeting people, talking about everything, and learning something different is a way to expand our minds and become better human beings.

Sometimes, I would like that the people who came before me could have the same opportunity to be at Hurricane Island and learn about all of this. Therefore, I realized that being there, was a way to honor these people. If I could give some advice, I would tell you to enjoy each minute of your journey.

Learn more about United People Global and how to apply to this amazing and unique partnership program with Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership

Louize Oliveira is a Project Manager and UPG Sustainability Leader based in São Paulo Brazil. Louize is Co-founder of SafePlace, a social digital platform with the purpose to promote gender equality in the work environment, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 - Gender Equality, of UN 2030 Agenda.

Sorting Spat Bags with Commercial Growers

By Lucy Williams

Throughout the summer weeks you will find our educational programs on our main pier. Front and center, students, educators and researchers are sorting through muck, squishy tunicates, skeleton shrimp, and piles of clams. The goal is to find juvenile scallops in these green and blue mesh bags, called spat bags. 

Research Assistant Sam Poratti and (then) Research Intern Lucy Williams sorting spat on Hurricane in 2021

Every year in September, our research team sets out spat bag lines at twelve locations surrounding Hurricane and the Muscle Ridge. Last year, our Director of Education, John Van Dis, set out some additional educational spat bags with Belfast and Oceanside schools in October. These lines are usually retrieved in the late spring and organized on our aquaculture site. Our spat bag research is an undertaking that takes the entire summer for students, participants, the occasional island visitor, and the research team to sort through. While collecting the juvenile scallops, we count the precise amount of living scallops, measure a percentage of them, and account for other species present in the bags such as tunicates, sea stars, and mussels.

However, for commercial scallop farms like Pen Bay Scallops, the process is much faster and does not include precise counting, measuring, and biodiversity analysis like we do on Hurricane. Commercial farmers are usually most interested in the amount of scallops collected year to year wherever they set their bags. With dual commercial and research applications, spat bags are a great teaching tool for introducing students and interested growers to scallop aquaculture and the unique qualities of the animal that make farming different (and maybe a little more complex) from other bivalves.

On May 16th, Pen Bay Scallops farmers Marsden and Bob Brewer hosted the Eastern Maine Skippers Program, a high school collaboration with Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries,  as well as a few interested farmers for sorting their spat bags with the help of the Hurricane Island Research team. We were able to boat over from Rockland to Stonington in the morning fog in our new vessel, Sunny. On the Stonington public dock, three groups sorted through ten bags received by the Brewers from the approximate 200 they set out each year. Madison Maier, Aquaculture Manager on Hurricane, devised a scheme for estimating the total amount of scallops per bag. For perspective, our first few bags this season have had 170, 243, and even 434 scallops per bag. Pen Bay Scallop’s spat bags averaged 4,038 per bag! 

Logan Leach (left) and Emery Leach (right) sort through the netron mesh from one of the Brewer’s spat bags and the juvenile scallops fall into the barrel to be measured  (right image). 

To get this estimate, students collected 10 mL of scallops by scooping up from the piles of scallops that came out of every bag or by individually picking them up. Once they had 10 mL, they counted the total number of scallops that filled that 10 mL volume. Three measurements were made for each bag and the average number of scallops in 10 mL was calculated. Then, the total volume of scallops for each bag was measured using 1000 mL graduated cylinders. Once the total volume of scallops was obtained, the students simply multiplied the number of scallops in 10 mL by the number it would take to get to the total volume.

The total scallops in each bag ranged from 1700 scallops to 7160 scallops. The total scallops collected in all 10 bags was estimated to be 40,380! That is a lot of little scallops! Marsden and Bob, with the help of the students, sorted the juvenile scallops by size and then put them in appropriate gear for them to grow up on their commercial aquaculture lease near Crotch Island. 

Benthic Ecology Meeting Wrap Up

Lead Researcher Phoebe Jekielek brings us a great review of the Benthic Ecology Meeting - Not sure what that is? Read on!

The past few years have been years full of seclusion for everyone, including the scientific community. Meetings, conferences, and workshops were all moved to Zoom in order to keep us all safe as the pandemic unfolded. But now, the scientific community is also starting to “open up” with in-person events and the re-introduction to networking, sharing ideas, and debating research…it’s kind of anxiety-inducing and awkward and exhilarating all at once. The Hurricane Research Team got to participate in this re-introduction last week at the Benthic Ecology Meeting (BEM) in Portsmouth, NH. 

All in a day’s work - Lead Scientist Phoebe Jekielek reaching for the data on a research trip to Pen Bay Farmed Scallops’ aquaculture site near Stonington, ME. It all starts out in the field!

The BEM is put on by the Benthic Meeting Ecology Society (BEMS), a non-profit organization established to run a yearly meeting to exchange scientific information focusing on marine benthic ecosystems (e.g., rocky intertidal, coral reef) and to foster the next generation of benthic biologists. Their mission is to promote research in benthic ecosystems, support the exchange of information about benthic ecology, and encourage student participation to develop the next generation of benthic ecologists. This year there was a lot of representation from Hurricane Island staff, both past and present!! 

Hurricane Research Assistant Lucy Williams presenting at the Benthic Ecology Meeting

Our current Lead Scientist (Phoebe, me), our Aquaculture Manager (Madison), and our Research Assistant (Lucy) all got to attend. I was totally overwhelmed by the number of talks that I wanted to attend and had to make some hard decisions! Sessions spanned climate change, aquaculture and fisheries, invasive species, new technology and many more. Lucy also led the charge to create an amazing poster with Madison highlighting our scallop reproduction work and presented it during the poster session on Thursday night. Presenting posters is a great way to network, exchange ideas, and practice communicating about the research we and our partners are undertaking.

2021 Summer Intern and Bowdoin College junior Sophie Lisle presenting at the BEM

There were also presentations given at the conference by Carl Huntsberger and Sophie Lisle, two past Hurricane staff!! Carl was our Research Assistant during 2020 and is now a Research Biologist at the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) in Rhode Island and leads the Sea Scallop Research Fleet effort and a project to assess fisheries species at the South Fork Wind Farm. He presented on lobster stock structure research with commercial harvesters. Sophie was an Education Intern on Hurricane last summer and is now a junior at Bowdoin College where she’s been working on evaluating microplastic consumption across trophic levels. Can’t wait to see what she does in her senior year and beyond. 

Aquaculture Manager Madison Maier gives students a tour of the 3.2 acre experimental aquaculture site on Hurricane Island

All in all it was really great to get back to a bit of in-person connection and information sharing. The conversations that arise when you’re getting your coffee or walking from your hotel to the conference might create new collaborations and generate new ideas in just a few minutes. This conference only stoked my fires about the work we’re doing on Hurricane, the role we’re playing to create sustainable solutions to the ecological, social, and economic challenges of a changing world, and how we can best mentor and prepare the next generation of scientists and change makers to face those challenges. Onward ever onward ☺

For more information on Lucy’s Research be sure to check out the recent blog posts and research pages on our website.

January Island Visit

John Morin has been running the charter business “Equinox Island Transit” for years, moving people and goods to and from the islands of Penobscot Bay and beyond just about as reliably as the sun rises every day. Contractors that commute to the islands in the winter are key clients, and North Haven Island has been the destination of choice for most of this winter. Equinox handles the majority of the passenger transportation to Hurricane Island, where staff have been delivering summer programming since the formation of Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership in 2009. Today, as the sun rose over the islands to the east, the Equinox idled off the dock and headed out for another day of work, and another trip to Hurricane Island. 

My day started at quarter of six, heading down to the boat shortly after dragging on clothes and pounding a cup of coffee (black, we were out of half and half). I have been filling in for John as relief captain this winter, keeping my sea time up and getting some experience handling single-screw downeast boats. John has given me the reins today; the responsibility of delivering his contractors to North Haven.Those aren’t the only passengers on this particular Wednesday, however. Three other staff from Hurricane Island are tagging along for the rare and important winter island checkup trip. 

We made the Breakwater by 0635 and steered a course north of the PB buoy, shooting to hit just south of the Monument on Fiddler’s Ledge, a well-known landmark for anyone who’s ever been through the Fox Island Thorofare. The temperature was probably in the single digits outside the cabin, but inside, with the big six cylinder Caterpillar making heat and the diesel drip heater going down forward, it was comfortable. The Equinox is about as good a winter lobster boat as you could ask for. She’s heavy, dry exhaust (easier to winterize in freezing temps), and has ample space below to stay out of the weather. Some small but critical features include a centrifugal clear-view window and heated windshields, which keeps your vision clear of freezing spray. 

We were inside the Thorofare by 0710 and out of the majority of the freezing spray. The sunlight was just starting to brighten up the skinny piece of water ahead that separates the islands of Vinalhaven and North Haven, and although cold, was another beautiful day to be on the water. I idled the blue 40’ Young Brothers past the mooring field, usually stuffed with summer boats, but today there were just a handful of islander’s lobster boats with low slung ice beards just above their waterlines, clinging to the spray rails. The contractors piled onto the dock and up the gangway, to hop in their frozen vehicles and head off to their respective jobs.

With the contractors offloaded, we headed casually back out the Thorofare with the sun at our backs, following the Vinalhaven coast on a familiar route to me. The trip takes us past the Sugar Loaves, around Brown’s Head Light, and past the gazebo on Crockett’s Point as we fall off to port, headed for Leadbetter’s Narrows. Coming through Leadbetter’s Narrows, looking up to the house and yard, and seeing the floats tucked away in the cove was just beautiful, still in the shadow of the morning. After the Narrows, your view opens up to the head of Hurricane Sound, and we swing almost due south for Hurricane. 

The band of snow melted off evenly by the tide on Leadbetter’s bold coast, and the dense spruces tipped with white was just beautiful as we cruised at an economical 9kts, which is just about hull speed for this boat. We snuck over into the lee of Crane Island as we proceeded south. There’s rumor that a rare Russian “Steller’s Sea Eagle,” is around, far out of its normal range of coastal Russia and occasionally western Alaska, so we keep a sharp eye out for any big-bodied raptors, including Snowy Owls. Nate had his big lens with him, so we were really hoping for some action.

With no bird sightings of significance, we ran the rest of the way down to Hurricane. Today’s tasks included an important mid-winter sea water sample and depth profile with a tethered Sonde muli-parameter measuring device that gets lowered at a steady rate collecting data from the surface to the bottom, resulting in a detailed data profile. We also used a Niskin bottle, which is a much more simple device, to capture water samples at specific depths. The Niskin sample is placed into a specially prepared brown plastic bottle to be frozen and later analyzed for environmental DNA, as part of an ongoing study. 

With the sampling out of the way, it was time to land alongside the pilings at the Main Pier and take a walk around to check the photovoltaic systems, buildings, and any unpredicted damages the winter weather has made. With the tide outgoing, and a little chop in the mooring field, I elected to let the gang off and idle around the south side of the island in the lee of Gaston’s Cove to wait in the sun for them to walk around and take pictures. With a big snow forecasted, Madison and Lucy took the rare opportunity to skate on the Quarry Pond. 

In an hour, they called me back to the pier and I eased the big boat alongside the ladder again. Everybody made it down the slippery rungs and safely back aboard, and I got a flurry of positive reports and pictures as we headed for home. Battery systems seemed to be holding on, and in general, everything was weathering the winter pretty well. It’s always amazing to me how resilient the island is. 

Tilt Current Meter, The Sequel

By Research Assistant Lucy Williams

The following is a brief update regarding the tilt-current meter (TCM) deployment on the Hurricane Island aquaculture site this past summer and fall.

Find the first post here: https://www.hurricaneisland.net/island-updates/2021/9/15/tilt-current-meter-tcm 

Our goal with the TCM was to collect flow speed and direction data during a spawning event on our experimental aquaculture farm. Scallops broadcast spawn, meaning they send gametes (eggs and sperm) into the water for fertilization. There are many studies on what induces large-scale spawning events for scallops and these results can vary from location to location and year to year. Hurricane Island has been collecting data from our farm for three years regarding approximately when spawning occurs and possible environmental factors that induce spawning such as temperature and moon phase. Specifically, downwellings coinciding with temperature increases have been shown to correspond to spawning events for scallops (J. C. Bonardelli et a, 1996), but this hypothesis had not been tested on our site. So, we deployed our TCM on the customized anchor at the end of August until the end of October, a collection time chosen due to historical data about spawning events on our farm. 

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Figure 1a: Average GSI per sample collection in 2021 on Hurricane Island’s Aquaculture Site

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Figure 1b: Average GSI per sample collection July - October 2021 on Hurricane Island’s Aquaculture Site

How do we know when scallops are spawning? We collected scallops from our aquaculture site to dissect and weigh them in order to calculate what is called gonadosomatic index (GSI), the ratio of wet gonadal mass to the total wet body mass without the shell. The GSI essentially tells us if the scallop's in our sample aquaculture population are "ripening" to spawn or if they have spawned already. What we are looking for is a steady increase followed by a sharp drop in average GSIs from these samples, indicating that a spawning event has occurred.

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Figure 2: TCM Data collected on Hurricane Island Aquaculture Site. Gray lines refer to exact data collected using a TCM device. The blue solid line is a viewing aid to show trends in data, calculated with a generalized additive model. Red dotted line refers to the maximum speed calculated during sampling, 19.76 cm/s, which occurred at 2021-09-10 15:55:00 EDT. 

Figure 1b shows us a sharp drop in GSI in the beginning and middle of September, the weeks of September 1st through September 20th We assume that a spawning event occurred within that time frame. Figure 2 is the TCM data from the spawning weeks observed in the GSI data.

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Figure 3: Daily average temperature at depth July - October at Hurricane Island Site.  Sources for temperature data collection include Sonde, HOBO, and TCM devices. Shape type ( ●, ▲, ◼) indicate which device provided averages on a given day with multiple samples taken on some days. 

We see that we have a local maxima during the second week of September. In fact, this is the maximum speed collected during the entire deployment from August to October. This maximum flow speed occurs during the middle of what we expect to be a spawning event. Whether this peak flow speed influenced scallop spawning is still yet to be determined. In addition, temperature is still missing from this analysis at this time. Our next steps are to look at temperature data during this time period and compare to surrounding months as well as recreate this experiment next summer and compare results. 

            Early stage temperature analysis suggests that daily temperature at the site peaked at a similar time as the spawning event. See in figure 3. However, peak occurs at the beginning of September, but daily average temperature begins to cool off into the weeks we believe fall under our spawning timeline. Potentially, this temperature turn from warming to cooling, coinciding with a large temperature drop from one sample to another suggests that the temperature change is more indicative than maximum temperature. Further experimentation with temperature at depth will be needed this coming summer to identify possible temperature and flow downwellings. 

Works Cited

Bonardelli, J. C., et al. “Relation of Spawning of the Giant Scallop, Placopecten Magellanicus, to 

Temperature Fluctuations during Downwelling Events.” Marine Biology, vol. 124, no. 4, 1 

Feb. 1996, pp. 637–649., https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00351045. 

The Tilt Current Meter is produced by Lowell Instruments. More info can be found on their website