Nor'easter 1999 Marine Advisory Connecticut | Maine/New Hampshire | MIT | New York | Rhode Island | WHOI

Connecticut

Summer Teacher Workshops
The word "summertime" usually conjures images of lazy afternoons sipping iced tea on the porch, but that was hardly the case for sixth-grade educators Lisa Zint and Patrick Alarcon, pilot participants in the Sea Grant Teacher Intern program at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk. The four-week paid internships are a professional development opportunity for teachers to combine research, field experiences, and aquarium work. Zint and Alarcon investigated salt marsh reclamation programs and water quality analysis, commercial fishing, water treatment, animal feeding and tank maintenance, and curriculum development with the assistance of state and city agencies, industry, and the aquarium staff. The interns joined Connecticut Sea Grant educators Amy Haddow and Kim Raccio to present the program at the National Science Teachers Association annual meeting. The program runs again in 1999.

Yale Interns Assist Communities
Connecticut communities will have help making critical environmental and economic decisions, thanks to student projects conducted through the Sea Grant Yale Internship Program. The eight projects implemented included GIS-based studies on the spread of Phragmites (invasive reed grass), a potential marsh restoration site, and the analysis of land use patterns in a water supply watershed. One intern compared nonpoint source nitrogen loading in various subwatersheds, while another used the NEMO (Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials) format to turn research data into information more easily understood by local officials. Another intern studied newly identified insects that cause significant damage to Phragmites and that have potential use in biological control. The interns are graduate students in Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Center for Coastal and Watershed Systems.

Connecticut Seafood Council Makes Debut
Connecticut seafood is establishing a collective identity, thanks to the new Connecticut Seafood Council. Established by the Connecticut General Assembly, the Council includes appointees representing seafood harvesters, shellfishermen, wholesalers, and retailers. Ex-officio members, who took office in 1998, include representatives from Connecticut Sea Grant and the state’s departments of Environmental Protection, Agriculture, and Economic and Community Development, and the Bureau of Aquaculture. The 1999 kick-off marketing promotion features the American shad, a tasty anadromous fish that makes migratory spawning runs in late spring from the ocean to freshwater rivers such as the Connecticut.

Maine/New Hampshire

Sea & Shore Radio Series
Through radio, the Maine Coastal Program and the Sea Grant Program at the University of Maine (UM) are conveying information about the state’s coastal and marine resources to people in a place they spend hours each day: their cars.

This new communications project aims to improve appreciation of the Maine coast’s distinct ecological character and of its natural and human systems through a series of one-minute radio spots called the Sea & Shore Educational Radio Program.

The need for this program is clear. While the overall population of Maine has grown slowly this past decade, the population in coastal Maine has not. Town after town has seen its population swell as more people flock permanently to the coast. The number of tourists visiting Maine also has grown—and the coast has felt the greatest pressure.

How do these new residents and tourists learn about this remarkable environment? The majority may not read natural history guides or engage in Audubon Society trips. Consequently, the Sea Grant Program at UM has turned to one of the more effective communication avenues: commercial radio.

Sea & Shore is produced in the studios at UM and features a range of coastal and marine environmental topics. A total of 26 topics will air on specific stations, one every two weeks. To complement the radio programs, a series of brief articles on the same subjects will be distributed to local coastal newspapers.

Low Power Radio Begins Broadcasting
Next time you’re driving in the Dover Point, NH, area, tune your radio to 1610 AM for Great Bay Area Radio, a low power radio station that went on the air in March. Funded by the NOAA/UNH Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology, the station broadcasts environmental information about the Great Bay Estuary. Located near the Scammel and Newington bridges and powered by a 10-watt transmitter, the station can be heard for a radius of about three miles.

"The programming is designed to provide people driving through the area with information about the estuary and research projects under way there," explains Julia Peterson, a Sea Grant Extension specialist who oversaw the development of the station. "Our listeners will also learn what they can do to protect the estuary and about programs they can participate in, like Discovery Cruises."

In order to gather information on the effectiveness of the broadcasts, Maine/NH Sea Grant has added a response form to its web site (http://www.seagrant.unh.edu/ciceet.htm) to encourage listeners to give input. So, please tune in to a broadcast and then fill out the form. You may win a cruise on the bay.

Pathfinders Explore the Coast of NH
K-12 teachers from throughout the Northeast and the Midwest spent two weeks in New Hampshire in July participating in Operation Pathfinder. The teachers participated in a number of field trips, lectures, and labs dealing with ocean technologies, marine biology, waves and currents, estuaries, and fisheries. Organized by a team led by Extension Educator Sharon Meeker on behalf of Sea Grant, NOAA, the U.S. Navy, UNH Cooperative Extension, and the UNH Department of Natural Resources, the program marked the second time UNH has hosted the event.

MIT

New Ways to Protect Right Whale from Ship Strikes
In a move to protect endangered right whales from ship strikes, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization recently approved a mandatory ship reporting system for right whales. Congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts’ 10th district has been a key advocate for the system’s implementation. Since July 1999, ships weighing more than 300 gross tons have been required to notify the Coast Guard when entering critical habitats in Cape Cod Bay and the Great South Channel, as well as along the Florida/Georgia coasts. The Coast Guard, in turn, alerts those ships as to the latest whereabouts of right whales.

Currently, the principal source of sighting data is aircraft observations, an approach that becomes unreliable at night and during poor visibility—when the endangered whales are most vulnerable. A system under development by MIT Sea Grant’s Center for Fisheries Engineering Research (CFER) may just fill that gap. CFER’s director, Cliff Goudey, and research associate Ken Ekstrom have been developing an acoustic detection buoy with funding support from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust. The project has taken the researchers to Canada’s Grand Manan Sanctuary in the Bay of Fundy, where extensive recordings were made of right whale vocalizations. Closer to home, VHF radio telemetry links have been tested for reliability.

With follow-on funds from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, CFER has begun the construction of a prototype listening buoy that will be tested this spring in Cape Cod Bay. An important aspect of the design is an ability to discriminate a right whale call from the myriad of other underwater sounds.

"We’ll put the buoy out in the spring during right whale season and establish a shore base to monitor it," explains Goudey. "Our goal is to provide a cost-effective way to supplement the current techniques of visual observations. Indeed, by keeping close track of the whales at night and during fog, more efficient search patterns can be established once visibility improves."

New York

Read All About It!
Addressing Local Coastal Erosion Concerns
That sea level will continue to rise in the next century is expected. How fast it will rise, though, is a question of broad speculation among experts in the field. Officials need to know how the different estimates may affect their coastal communities if they are to develop sound plans for dealing with this potential problem, emphasizes Jay Tanski, New York Sea Grant coastal processes and facilities specialist.

Tanski’s expertise was showcased in the April 4 "Environment and Energy" installment of Newsday’s yearlong look at the 21st Century, "Long Island: Our Future."

Newsday, the nation’s largest suburban newspaper, looked at the impacts of rising sea level on Long Island’s fragile coastline, along with other environmental concerns such as global warming and invasive species.

As a contributor to the coastal erosion piece, Tanski created a series of coastline maps printed along with the feature. These maps show two effects: how the position of the shoreline might change over the next 50 and 100 years in response to changes in sea level, and how the extent of flooding from a "50-year" storm—expected to occur on average only twice a century—could increase as a result of this change.

Detailed in Newsday’s "Our Future" web pages and linked from NYSG’s recently updated web site, Tanski’s mapping efforts are part of an ongoing project to use Geographic Information System (GIS) tools to provide decision-makers with information about coastal conditions and processes at a scale they can use. Computer-based GIS systems, says Tanski, allow the user to analyze and manipulate large, complex data sets fairly rapidly and present the results in a more accessible visual format that is especially effective for constantly changing information, such as revised sea level projections.

Rhode Island

Watershed Management: Seeing the Whole Picture
Watershed: The area of land that drains to the outlet of a lake, stream, ocean, or other water body. All land is in one watershed or another, and Rhode Island is divided into 25 watersheds.

In Rhode Island as elsewhere, water and land resources have been managed by different agencies. And in fact, individual programs within each have acted separately, so that septic systems have been managed independently of point source discharges, wetland permits have been issued unilaterally, etc.

The Coastal Resources Center (CRC)/Rhode Island Sea Grant helped the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) formulate a new approach to resources management. This "watershed approach" eschews management along political boundaries in favor of ecosystem management, which crosses state, municipal, and agency lines. This approach considers how land use affects water quality and how water uses affect the land.

"People don’t think in terms of watersheds," says Meg Kerr, CRC watershed programs project manager. So, one challenge has been to change the way people make decisions about resource use.

The proponents of the approach researched watershed management in other states and tailored the approach to Rhode Island. One recommendation was to combine the many small watersheds into five regions, each having a team of stakeholders and management organizations plus a coordinator to provide a link between the state and the local watershed. A group of nongovernmental organization and agency heads would coordinate distribution of resources to encourage action.

The approach has been tested in the Wood-Pawcatuck watershed, an area that crosses not only town, but also state, boundaries and includes a sovereign Native American nation. Sea Grant programs, municipalities, government agencies, and other groups from Rhode Island and Connecticut have formed the Pawcatuck Watershed Partnership to address issues, such as drinking water and tourism, that affect the entire area. CRC is broadening the approach to take in all of Rhode Island’s southernmost county to make the approach more familiar to municipalities that are more comfortable dealing with regional boundaries.

"We don’t want to push a new approach," says Kerr. "We want to build it from the grassroots level."

WHOI

WHOI Sea Grant Welcomes New Coastal Processes Specialist
Coastal geologist James F. O’Connell has joined the WHOI Sea Grant staff as coastal processes specialist for Marine Extension.

As an avid surf kayaker, scuba diver, and fisherman, O’Connell spends a great deal of time observing the interaction of waves, beaches, and sediment transport. "While no beach looks the same from year to year, or even day to day, there are similarities in the processes that create and change beaches, dunes, and barrier beaches," explains O’Connell. What creates their individuality, he says, can be attributed to these similar processes operating at varying intensities. Lack of knowledge about these processes and intensities, O’Connell says, can lead to losses, including property loss, damage to coastal landforms, and even loss of life.

O’Connell does more than just recreate along the Massachusetts shoreline: He researches it. Formerly coastal geologist and hazards coordinator for the Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management (MCZM) office, O’Connell studied the Massachusetts coastline and worked with coastal managers, scientists, and policy-makers on a daily basis. Much of his work with MCZM, and more recently as marine resources specialist with the Cape Cod Commission, involved writing and recommending legislation and regulations pertaining to shoreline management at the local and state levels.

Results of a statistical analysis of shoreline change that O’Connell conducted while at MCZM revealed that, overall, the Massachusetts shore is eroding at approximately six inches per year, with 72 percent of Massachusetts’ coastal communities exhibiting long-term erosion. WHOI scientists documented that approximately 65 acres of coastal upland are being lost every year as a result of relative sea level rise. "These findings, coupled with the fact that 75 percent of development has historically occurred within the Massachusetts coastal zone, presents shoreline managers with a dilemma," says O’Connell.

At Sea Grant, O’Connell continues his shoreline change work while providing technical information and assistance relating to the function and sustainable use of coastal landforms.

O’Connell replaces Graham S. Giese, coastal processes specialist from 1990 until his retirement in December, 1998.