Rockweed Working Group update

I attended the Rockweed Working Group's meeting on Wednesday, April 1, 2015 in Bangor, ME. The Rockweed Working Group is made up of 5 scientists who are volunteering their time help determine how this brown algae should be managed within the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) fisheries management plans before rockweed harvesting takes off as a larger commercial industry. The group has been charged with providing recommendations to DMR about areas that should be designated as closures and prohibit rockweed harvesting. Portions of the coast or islands can only be designated as closures if doing so protects "sensitive" wildlife areas, as determined and justified by scientific evidence. The group has already reviewed the justification for restricting harvesting in specific areas along the coast of Maine during certain times of year to protect declining populations of shore birds. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife tracks changes in bird populations along the coast, and provided data to help the working group determine timing and location of these closures.

Smooth periwinkle snails often hang out on clumps of rockweed where they can be easily mistaken for the air bladders that help the brown algae float in the ocean for maximum photosynthesis.

At Wednesday's meeting, the discussion focused on whether Harbor and Gray seals should be classified as sensitive species, and if yes, whether their habitat should be considered for closure. Populations of seals seem to be doing well and so it was challenging to determine whether or not pupping ledges should be closed to rockweed harvesting during pupping season. The Marine Mammal Protection Act  does prohibit individuals from changing the behavior of a marine mammal and so, in a sense, the Federal MMPA would already prohibit rockweed harvesting in any areas that are close enough to disrupts seals. Dr. Brian Beal also presented a literature review of the impact of rockweed harvesting on invertebrates. He concluded that the current evidence from research does not show a major impact of harvesting on intertidal invertebrates; however, more studies need to be done. 

A segment of the meeting was dedicated to figuring out how the Working Group will address intertidal habitat that is owned by or adjacent to conserved lands. A resolution on this issue was not reached. I used this agenda item as an opportunity to follow up on a letter I had submitted last week on behalf of Hurricane Island (see the letter here) and asked that the Working Group consider the intertidal habitat owned or used by field stations and marine labs for educational and scientific purposes to be closed to commercial harvest. The members of the group were extremely receptive to this idea and so I am working to gather the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates for the areas that should be closed. Once this information has been gathered, I will submit it to DMR for consideration along with the Working Group's recommendations. 

Visit to Great Duck

View of the keeper's house from the lighthouse.

We are in the formative stages of building a field research station on Hurricane Island – an exciting, but also challenging time in figuring out the right scale for a station on an island in Penobscot Bay. During this process, I have found discussions with scientists who run field stations invaluable in guiding my thinking on the development of our station. On July 12, 2014, I had the opportunity to visit College of the Atlantic’s (COA) Alice Eno Field Research Station on Great Duck Island. COA, the State of Maine, the Nature Conservancy, and a private residence share the 220-acre island. We took COA’s research vessel, a 46’ West Mac, from COA’s campus in Bar Harbor out to the island. The facilities are modest and completely off the grid which is similar to Hurricane. I gained important insight into the appropriate scale of necessary infrastructure to support researchers for a period of time on an island.

Each summer, Dr. John Anderson, a COA faculty member, oversees a team of six to seven students that conducts research on Great Duck, often focusing on the breeding populations of Leach’s Storm Petrels and resident Herring and Black-backed Gulls that nest on the island each year. Through cooperative agreements, COA students can access the majority of the island to conduct research projects.

Great Duck and Hurricane have some interesting similarities and differences. Both were inhabited and used by humans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Hurricane supported a thriving quarry town while Great Duck had a lighthouse keeper’s family and a flock of sheep (for more on Great Duck's history, click here). Hurricane was subjected to a second period of human pressure from the 1960s to the mid-2000s. Once these inhabitants left their respective islands, vegetation was released from human pressures and regenerated. Spruce-fir forests now dominate both islands; however, Great Duck has a stand of similarly aged trees as saplings rarely survive due to grazing of introduced hare while on Hurricane, we have a number of young spruce trees and will potentially experience overcrowding issues. We do have a number of deer on Hurricane, but have not yet quantified their grazing effect on our vegetation. 

Gulf of Maine Field Research Station Workshop

Workshop attendees tour the Bowdoin Coastal Studies Center in Harpswell, ME. 

Alice, HIF Science Educator, and I had the opportunity to participate in a weekend Gulf of Maine field station gathering (March 28th - 30th, 2014) at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME. Participants included representatives from 12 Gulf of Maine field research stations, including: the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area and the Coastal Center at Shortridge (Bates College), Bowdoin College Marine Laboratory & Coastal Studies Center and Bowdoin Scientific Station at Kent Island, College of the Atlantic's McCormick Blair Mount Desert Rock Field Station and Great Duck Island Eno Marine Field Station, Suffolk University's R.S. Friedman Field Station and Cobscook Bay Laboratory, Schoodic Institute's Schoodic Education and Research Center, Shoals Marine Lab which is associated with the University of New Hampshire and Cornell University, the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station, the UMass Marine Station at Hodgkins Cove, and Acadia University's Evelyn and Morrill Richardson Field Station in Biology on Bon Portage Island.

We came away from this gathering excited about all of the opportunities there are for collaboration in the Gulf of Maine, and we look forward to becoming part of a formal network of field stations that will coordinate monitoring efforts, share resources, and leverage our collective expertise to promote the role of place-based science in our changing world. We gained invaluable knowledge about how other field stations operate, their research agendas, and how Hurricane Island's Field Research Station can fit into but also build upon and improve the research capacity in the Gulf of Maine. Stay tuned-- more Gulf of Maine Field Station Network updates soon!