Scallop Nerds Unite!

From April 23rd through April 28th, 2015, I attended and presented at the 20th International Pectinid Workshop in Galway, Ireland. Scientists from all over the world participated and session topics included ecology and general biology, aquaculture, fisheries, marine protected areas, biotoxins, resource management, and two sessions were dedicated to physiology, biochemistry, and genetics. A special session focused on Pectinids as witnesses of their environment in a changing ocean. This session featured work by French scientists to develop analysis tools which will use the shells of scallops to determine environmental characteristics at the time when the shell is formed. They have yet to determine the method for Placopecten magellanicus, the species found in Maine, but when they do, we hope to send them samples from the Muscle Ridge and Ocean Point closed areas.

Maine representatives L-R Skylar Bayer, Caitlin Cleaver, Trish Cheney, Carla Guenther, and Dana Morse

Maine was well represented at the conference, with four of us presenting our current research including Skylar Bayer, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences, who presented on her dissertation work studying fertilization success in the Atlantic Sea Scallop (Placopecten magellanicus). Trisha Cheney, Resource coordinator for scallops, urchins, groundfish permit bank at Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) presented on state scallop management efforts, and Dr. Carla Guenther, Senior Scientist at Penobscot East Resource Center (PERC) and a member of the Scallop Advisory Council, followed up Trish's presentation by sharing the work that PERC and DMR have done to build trust within the scallop fishing community and to implement the rotational closed area management system currently in place in Zone 2. I provided preliminary results from quantifying the effect of the Muscle Ridge Closed Area on scallop populations. 

Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, Dr. Dave Bethoney, and Dr. Susan Inglis from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (You can find info about their work here) and Dr. Dvora Hart who works in the Population Dynamics Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, MA, presented on their work on the federal scallop fishery which ranged from a parasite in scallops that causes the white meat of the adductor to turn gray to larval dispersal.  

Conversations with workshop participants have inspired me to consider additional methods for the Collaborative Scallop Project that would improve the power of the study. In the near term, I am hoping to organize a visit to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center to learn their shell aging and growth rate methods so we can apply it to the shells we've collected over the past two years. 

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A full group photo from the conference (I am hiding in the back row at the left edge of the blue background)

Paperwork - the not-so-fun side of research...

Phoebe and I prior to one of our dives on the Muscle Ridge closed area in the fall of 2013.

This month (June 2014), we have been making incremental progress towards getting into the field for the second year survey effort for the Lower Muscle Ridge scallop closed area. Basically, overcoming barriers to collaborative research takes time. Some organizations, like the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the University of Maine already have systems in place to allow their divers to do field work off of commercial fishing vessels while, others have not yet ventured into that realm. I am in the process of putting those systems in place for the Hurricane Island Foundation so our staff will be able to conduct research dives from commercial fishing vessels as well as our own. Doing so can take some time, but it's all in the name of having a safe SCUBA diving operation which is of the utmost importance if we want to continue doing research-related diving in the future. This process involves creating documents that outline the potential risks of participating in field work on a boat and underwater, as well as identifying ways we plan to mitigate those risks by being prepared with safety equipment and identifying the closest medical facilities to our field site. We are also developing a project dive plan that outlines our anticipated diving activity.  Diver conduct will adhere to the University of Maine's diving safety manual until we create one specific to the Hurricane Island Foundation. Eventually, we will create a diving control board made up of experienced scientific divers who will review our dive plans to ensure we are operating safely. We are also considering pursuing an organizational membership with the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (AAUS), an organization that specializes in establishing and maintaining scientific diving standards.