Maine Seafood Alliance, representing and advocating for all aspects of the Maine seafood industry.

State Red Tide Update

June 1, 2009

SOURCE: DMR
Biotoxin monitoring program

DMR Red Tide Update May 29,,2009
Hi Everyone –

We haven't seen any great sweeping changes in the PSP toxicity patterns and scores in western Maine; there are still high scores in eastern Casco Bay, and a steady supply of lower scores spread along the coast from the NH border to Friendship. One improvement, however, has been that with the extra staff and supplies that we have been able to put into play with the red tide federal red tide disaster funds, we were able to create a new regular field run for the upper areas of Harpswell, Brunswick, and West Bath, which has opened up a sizable area of clam flats, and will hopefully keep them open for a good long stretch of the summer.

In eastern Maine, we had our first small closure of the season, for mussels, around the offshore area near Isle au Haut and Swans Island. We also have another troubling issue brewing in eastern Maine; the buoys have been deployed for several weeks now in Cobscook Bay. These are the same buoys which were used last year with great success, and kept many clam areas open for the entire season. We have even added additional buoys this year, to try to keep open some of the mussel territory. Unfortunately, we have already experienced some significant gear loss…more than can be explained by weather or tides. It may be that there is some local interference going on, cutting the DMR monitoring buoys. It is incredibly unfortunate that this is happening – we plan to replace the buoys on the run next week, but it will take at least two weeks of soaking time for the mussel bags to be used to determine an accurate score from that site; this means that if, in the next two weeks, our limited land stations show an increase in toxicity, we will have no choice but to close down large sections of Cobscook, because we have no information from the buoys that were lost. If the buoy cutting continues throughout the season, then we will be right back to the old days of shutting down the whole bay for most, if not all of the summer.

I can think of several reasons that folks might be cutting our buoys, all the way from simple territorial issues, to the dire personal economic times, to bitterness toward the Department. Whatever the case may be, these few people are, unfortunately, directly impacting the livelihoods of all of the hard working shellfish industry folks, in all of the communities that surround the bay. I would be happy to reach out to anyone who has issues or questions about the buoy project, if they would like to contact me directly. We have enough red tide federal disaster money to fund the buoy array in Cobscook Bay for the next three years, and it would be a real tragedy if we are not able to continue to provide this service to the shellfish community in far eastern Maine.

We still have no signs of toxin in the mahogany clam beds, and runs are now going out on a weekly basis.

Darcie Couture
Director, Biotoxin Monitoring
Maine Department of Marine Resources