Fall/Winter 1996
Marine Advisory
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For those who face weed pulling in the garden with trepidation, consider the difficult prospect of weeding your local lake! Sounds strange, yet there are lake managers in the Northeast who face just such a task to ensure that swimmers and boaters are not annoyed by masses of weeds clinging to feet and propellers, and that the lake itself does not become choked with vegetation.
How does one "weed" a lake? Well, according to participants at the annual conference of the New England chapter of the North American Lake Management Society, held in Ashland, Mass., last June, there are several options. For example, chemicals are sometimes used to kill unwanted vegetation. There's also mechanical harvesting or drawing down the water level during the winter to freeze the roots. And a popular solution for some species of aquatic nuisance plants is biological control - using insect species that are host-specific, meaning they only attack and harm the undesired plant species. In parts of New England, for example, two species of beetles are being used to control the spread of purple loosestrife, and a weevil is working on Eurasian water milfoil plants in certain Vermont lakes. The bottom line, however, is that there are no "silver bullets."
Connecticut Sea Grant Extension educator Nancy Balcom, who moderated two sessions on aquatic nuisance species, said, "Lake managers in New England want and need to talk to one another, to share their experiences with different treatment methods, both good and bad." What works great for one lake may fail miserably in another, so there is a need for a forum where this communication can occur easily.
"Lake managers are trying to prevent introductions of unwanted plant or animal species, such as zebra mussels, and it would be helpful to know in which lakes various nuisance species now occur," Balcom said. This information sharing could eventually lead to a push for new regulations or legislation prohibiting importation of harmful nonnative species, perhaps even on a regional level.
To facilitate these discussions, Balcom is sending a survey to New England lake management groups, to gather basic background information on each lake. This information will be made available to all lake groups. "Hopefully," says Balcom, "this will be a useful tool for lake managers, and will initiate dialogue between lake groups and with state agencies." For more information, contact Balcom at (860) 445-8664.
Over 65 researchers and citizens interested in sustaining the health of Penobscot Bay took part in a one-day forum on May 15 in Searsport. Penobscot Bay is Maine's largest bay, encompassing almost one-third of the state's total coastline, and covering an estimated 1,070 square miles. According to Robert Wall, director of the UM Sea Grant Program, which helped organize the forum, "We lack a synthesis of current knowledge, a framework, and priorities for future investigations."
Scientists who attended the conference agreed that research on Penobscot Bay is significant because there is so little of it. Discussion centered on what scientists know about the bay and how to frame issues for future studies. The bay's economic importance was underscored by UM marine ecologist Robert Steneck, who pointed out that about half of Maine's lobster landings and 20 percent of sea urchin landings come from counties around the bay.
Research needs identified by the group include an inventory of species, location of productive habitats, identification of impacts from toxic chemicals, and determination of sustainable harvests of urchins, lobsters, shrimp, and groundfish.
Marine educators from across the country and around the world spent the first five days of August at UNH and a number of other sites around the state. They were here to participate in "Making Connections: Global Lessons from the Gulf of Maine," the 20th annual conference of the National Marine Educators Association (NMEA).
Sponsored by NMEA, the Gulf of Maine Marine Education Association, Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant, UNH Cooperative Extension, and the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, the conference focused on the good and the bad of our regional use of the Gulf of Maine watershed, and on how our practices mirror economic and environmental activities on a global scale.
Noted marine biologist Sylvia Earle called for reform in the ways we use our marine resources in her keynote address. Well over 100 workshops, presentations, forums, demonstrations, field trips, and other events competed for the attendees. Sharon Meeker, a marine educator with Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant and cochair of the event, received NMEA's 1996 James Centorino Award, which is presented "for distinguished performance in marine education by professionals who are not classroom teachers."
Federal and state regulatory agencies are struggling with setting water and sediment quality criteria for metal contamination of coastal areas. Difficulties stem from both trying to define the most appropriate standards to best safeguard human health and the health of affected ecosystems, as well as to equip laboratories to apply the best assay methods.
For example, said Judith Pederson, manager of the MIT Sea Grant College Program's new Coastal Resources Center, "It is difficult to define chemical criteria that will predict a biological effect. The Environmental Protection Agency thinks they have an approach for metals, but few laboratories or state agencies are using these analytical techniques because they are difficult for states to adopt."
Identifying a need to bring scientists together with federal and state regulators and coastal mangers to address this issue, Pederson, with the Massachusetts Bays Program, offered a course to more than 125 scientists and coastal managers. Convened at MIT on July 25, 1996, the "Sources, Transport, Fates, and Effects of Metals in Marine and Aquatic Ecosystems Course" provided a much-needed opportunity for attendees to learn the latest in the understanding of metals in coastal systems, how they are best monitored, and what standards need to be adopted.
Marine recreational anglers enjoyed increased weakfish angling opportunities in the Peconics and south shore estuaries of Long Island last year. While this fishery is minuscule compared to the one that peaked in the early 1970s, weakfish enthusiasts and managers took notice of the upswing. This was good news for a popular species that had sustained important commercial and recreational fisheries from Massachusetts to North Carolina for more than a century.
In 1985, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission developed and adopted the Fishery Management Plan for weakfish, one of 20 species of the drum family found along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Despite amendments to the plan in 1991 and again in 1994, the weakfish population has not rebounded. The commission will soon adopt a third amendment that should allow weakfish to recover to healthy levels capable of maintaining commercial and recreational harvests consistent with a self-sustaining stock. New York regulations require that anglers throw back fish that fall under the 16-inch minimum size requirement.
The good news for anglers is that the fish they are releasing have a strong chance of surviving, and according to a new study, might be surviving at rates higher than previously estimated. Mark Malchoff, New York Sea Grant Extension specialist, has conducted research on weakfish (in the 12-to 18-inch size range) using sport-angling tackle in Great South Bay.
The research team caught and tagged a total of 90 fish during four evening angling sessions. All of the weakfish were caught with single-barbed hooks using either natural baits, squid strips or sandworms (Nereis virens), or artificial baits - mostly plastic worms. Fish, retrieved without landing nets, were unhooked by hand or with the aid of hemostats.
Researchers found that the short-term hooking mortality during the four trials was very low, averaging 2.6 percent, Malchoff said. The study also demonstrated that angled weakfish, most of which fall below New York's size requirement, have a good chance of survival. Fisheries managers can use this information to review their mortality calculations and possession limits necessary for recovery of the stock.
A more complete report on Malchoff's study, "Guidelines to Increase Survival of Released Sportfish," is available by contacting New York Sea Grant, 3059 Sound Avenue, Riverhead, NY 11901.
Tape your windows, fill the bathtub with water, stock up on candles, bread, and milk, and hope that your insurance policy will cover any damages - a familiar scene on the storm-prone East Coast.
Until recently, emergency management focused mainly on cleaning up the mess after a storm, eartahquake, or fire. "We've been in the bunkers, doing responsive stuff," says Virginia Lee, leader of the coastal management component of the Rhode Island Sea Grant Marine Advisory Service, referring to the approach taken in Rhode Island and throughout the Northeast.
But now, on both the state and federal levels, the emphasis is on looking ahead to hazard mitigation: developing ways to prevent damage in the first place, and to reduce costs as a result. Rhode Island Sea Grant and the URI Coastal Resources Center, together with the R.I. Emergency Management Agency (RIEMA) are working with the federal and state agencies, numerous local officials, and private industry to begin developing strategies to minimize vulnerability to natural hazards.
Through this effort, known as the Hazard Mitigation Partnership, RIEMA and Sea Grant are working with local officials in two regions - the Blackstone River valley and South County's vulnerable ocean coast - to identify risks to their communities and plan a course of action.
Unique relationships are also forming with the private sector - the insurance, building, banking, and real estate industries. Historically, the insurance industry has been dealt such severe blows by storms, floods, earthquakes, and fires that some companies have even been driven out of business following major events. Now, this industry, through the work of the Insurance Industry for Property Loss Reduction trade association, is working closely with Sea Grant and the Hazard Mitigation Partnership to create approaches that combine both economic and disaster protection for homeowners and communities in Rhode Island.
The hope of the Hazard Mitigation Partnership is that ultimately, putting dollars into planning before a disaster strikes will help prevent much larger expenditures down the road - such as the average $250 million per week that have been spent in the United States over the past 20 years on recovery efforts - making an ounce of prevention worth far more than a pound of cure.
Since the end of the last ice age, global sea level has risen hundreds of feet. This rise has led to shoreline retreat along a large part of the global coast. At coastal locations with elevated upland consisting of unconsolidated sediment, sea cliffs or "bluffs" are often cut into the seaward face of the upland by wave action. In many such locations, bluff erosion is the major source of beach sediment. The beaches moderate further bluff erosion and often serve as a sediment source for barrier beach systems at one or both ends of the bluff region. Such associated bluff/ barrier beach systems are common in southeastern New England. The study site for a research project led by Graham Giese, WHOI Sea Grant Marine Advisory leader, is one example: the west-facing bay shore of outer Cape Cod, comprising the Truro bluffs and the barrier beaches known as Pilgrim Beach to the north and the Wellfleet tombolo ("islands" connected by beaches) sequence to the south.
The objectives of the project are to determine (1) the geological evolution of the Truro bay shore since ice age glaciers retreated from the area, and (2) the temporal and spatial patterns of beach and bluff erosion and the processes controlling those patterns. Study methods include beach surveys from the bluff seaward to low water, and offshore surveys from the toe of the beach seaward to a depth of 30 meters. Field data will consist of depth/ elevation measurements, surface sediment samples, sediment cores, side-scan sonar records, and sub-bottom seismic reflection data.
Shoreline change is a major difficulty facing U.S. coastal resource management. Unfortunately, our present understanding of the processes responsible for such changes is insufficient. Improved understanding of the underlying processes and development of a predictive capacity for shoreline change are critical to successfully managing existing and future development. A major motivation for this project is the need for information about future bluff erosion in southeastern Massachusetts. Information derived from this study will be distributed and discussed with town, county, state, and Sea Grant outreach personnel, who will use it to provide home owners and regulators with improved forecasts of bluff erosion.