After months of talking and thinking about it, we have decided that the shellfish lab will not operate in 2024. Over the years, the lab has drawn many folks from near and far who toured the lab. They told us that seeing the lab and understanding what Gouldsboro is doing to reseed clam flats was fun, interesting, and even a little inspiring. Closer to home, the lab has helped many folks who live here learn where clams come from, who harvests them, and why clams are threatened as winters and the sea become warmer. As people came to understand that harvesting clams is important to Gouldsboro’s economy and to the many local folks who support themselves through seasonal and part-time work, the lab became an important part of the Town’s efforts to preserve and even increase shore access across private property for clam harvesters.
Shuttering the lab was not an easy decision. During a recent shellfish meeting, harvesters discussed the impacts of lab closure. Some felt we should keep it going. All said we needed to put the young clams we grew last summer out on the flats so they could grow, produce clam spat, and be harvested. During the last week of May, harvesters worked with Mike Pinkham to get the juvenile clams on the mud and under protective netting.
Here are some of the reasons behind the decision to shutter the lab this year.
- The January 10 storm flooded the area around the lab. The generator was partially submerged and is no longer operational. (The town may be able to get FEMA money to replace it, but that will be a way off if it happens at all.)
- Much of the pier and wharf infrastructure was seriously damaged. The plumbing that brought water to the lab is mostly gone and needs replacement. (The pump itself is fine; it was in storage.)
- Mike Pinkham and town employees and volunteers are still in storm response mode, working with FEMA and agencies to try to recover expenses related to storm damages. Finding time to make lab repairs, much less get it back and running, is a ways off.
The damage and disruption caused by the storm suggested to the two of us (Mike and Bill) that it was time to take a step back and assess where we are at with the work that we began a few years ago with much financial and volunteer support from others. That assessment will continue through this summer, but here are a few starting thoughts about where things stand.
- The original idea was to grow juvenile clams in trays over the summer and build an indoor facility to keep them alive over the winter so we could put them out on the flats in the spring. The appeal of this idea was that the summer growth process would not require electricity or a great deal of volunteer effort. However, we found, year after year, that growing clams in trays in Bunkers Harbor does not work because green crab predation is so great that the costs of the operation outweigh the benefits.
(We have documented these problems here on the Gouldsboro Shore website. We have tried to understand WHY our success in growing clams in trays is so different than what the Downeast Institute sees. Our efforts to quantify juvenile crab densities last summer were unsuccessful, and we do not have data pointing to an answer to this question. It is possible that the difference is that, as a working harbor for lobster fishermen, there are more bits of bait, lobster, and other food that support a thriving green crab population. But we don’t know that for sure.)
- So, we moved to a very different model—one in which we grow clams indoors in tanks during the summer. We’ve learned a lot in doing that and have already shared much of that learning on this site. Briefly summarized, our original pump, intended only to circulate a relatively small amount of water during the winter when clams are hibernating and not feeding, was completely inadequate for growing clams in the summer. We switched to a new kind of pump, designed for circulating water in swimming pools, and not only got better growth but used less electricity. We did not have a full summer of experience with that pump, so we do not have complete growth data, but what we saw looked promising. If we had been able to run the lab this summer, our goal would have been to gather better growth data.
- However, moving summer operations indoors greatly increased labor costs. The operation needed attention nearly daily, more substantial bucket cleaning every few days, and tank cleaning nearly weekly. We had a wonderful, dedicated group of volunteers who did this work over the past three years. We also had full-time interns, Sophie Chivers in 2021, Noah Milsky in 2022, and John Ayrik in 2023, working in the lab the past three summers. Last year, our high-school intern, Ada Fisher, also committed part of her time to the lab.
The town and the shellfish committee are grateful for the volunteer’s generosity and dedication and for the donations that enabled us to hire interns. However, the number of hours required to grow juvenile clams indoors far exceeded our expectations. With experience, we did find ways to become more efficient. Even so, the labor requirements still exceed what we can sustain as a volunteer effort or pay if we hire people to do the work.
- The work is not yet done after the clams have grown. At that point, they are a year old and have a shell length between a half and three-quarters of an inch. They need to be placed out in the mud in spring and covered with protective netting to keep seagulls and crabs from eating them. Then, in fall, the nets have to be removed so that winter ice doesn’t destroy them or carry them off. As the picture at the top of this post shows, removing nets covered with mud is very hard work.
- Gouldsboro’s clam harvesters are aging. We don’t know all of their ages, but we would guess that the median age is around 60 or older. Bill took the picture at the top of this post seven years ago when we had a team of high school students assisting with the work. Due to COVID and other changes, we are back to relying just on the harvesters doing this work as part of the conservation time they are required to provide each year. Watching them do this work, the effects of age are visible. They are a good group and work together well, but they are a small group. Some towns have forty, fifty, or more harvesters and more middle-aged and young harvesters. Such towns may be more able to put together crews to do the heavy work of placing and removing nets. For Gouldsboro, it is a bigger challenge.
In describing the thinking behind the decision to “hit the pause button” on the lab this year, we want to stress that the town is not giving up on its efforts to sustain and, if possible, grow the soft shell clam fishery. The shellfish lab and the effort to grow clams through their first birthday is just one part of a larger effort. Activities include:
- Mike is testing a new approach to trapping green crabs in collaboration with volunteer trappers and Heidi Leighton at the Department of Marine Resources. We hope this approach will be more successful in trapping the very young green crabs, which, because of their numbers, are responsible for much of the loss of young clams.
- We are moving ahead with a new approach to setting up agreements between shoreland property owners and the shellfish committee that we hope will remove much of the uncertainty that property owners can encounter in providing shore access. Look for more on that topic in our newsletter and here on the website in the coming weeks.
- Mike is working on ways to create larger markets for green crabs.
- Gouldsboro is supporting Brian Beal and the Downeast Institute in exploring alternatives to growing juvenile clams that do not involve pumps, tanks, and cleaning buckets.
- The shellfish committee is exploring the possibility of leaving nets on newly seeded clams through the winter in areas where ice build-up may be less of a problem.
We will close where we began this post. The shellfish lab has helped many people, including new arrivals to Gouldsboro, learn more about how this town is connected to and dependent on the sea. Building and sustaining awareness of that connection is essential work. Gouldsboro’s Shellfish Committee, Harbor Committee, Coastal Resilience Committee, Planning Board, and town leadership are committed to continuing it.
– Mike Pinkham and Bill Zoellick
