Maine bill to let towns limit marine worm digging passes Marine committee with amendment.

LD 1452 An Act To Allow Municipalities with Shellfish Conservation Ordinances To Request Permission To Prohibit Marine Worm Harvesting

BDN photo.

"This bill allows a municipality with a shellfish conservation ordinance to apply to the Department of Marine Resources to request a prohibition on marine worm harvesting. It also makes it a civil violation to harvest marine worms from areas closed to the harvest and possession of marine worms."

WHAT PEOPLE WROTE 

Written testimony, in alphabetical order, pdf files

Arsenault, James	Dresden	(286 KB)
Coffin, Chad	Maine Clammers Assn.	(57 KB)
Couture, Darcie	Lead Scientist/Resource Access International, LLC	(87 KB)
Creamer, Pamela	Woolwich Shelfish Conservation Committee	(35 KB)
Devereaux, Daniel	Brunswick Marine Resource Officer and Harbor Master	(82 KB)
Gerzofsky, Stan	Maine State Legislature	(176 KB)
Gideon, Sara	Maine State Legislature (75 KB) Add caption
Harrington, Daniel	Woolwich	(143 KB)
Harrington, Philip	Woolwich	(697 KB)
Johnson, Fred	Steuben	(255 KB)
Keliher, Patrick	DMR	(95 KB)
Kent, Peter	Maine State Legislature	(124 KB)
Latti, Mark	Brunswick Marine Resources Committee	(1934 KB)
Latti, Mark	Resident	(98 KB)
Renwick, John	Birch Harbor

Help requested for Maine green crab survey

Clammers in Casco Bay have reported seeing very few sublegal clams this spring and summer. They are also witnessing what appears to be an explosion in populations of green crabs.  

Maine Clammers Association is trying to extend the observations made in the Freeport area to other areas along the Maine coast to see if a similar reduction in clams and increase in green crab infestations are happening elsewhere.  

If you have seen pockmarking on flats, if you have seen green crabs in channels or on mudflats, if you have seen green crabs causing erosion in shoreland areas, please contact:

Chad Coffin – Maine Clammer’s Association: friendsoftheclammers@comcast.net    or Brian Beal – University of Maine at Machias/Downeast Institute: bbeal@maine.edu

Listen to Chad Coffin testify before the Maine Legislature's Marine Resources Committee earlier this year, on the devastation wrought by green crabs. And to the questions the legislators responded with.

CRABS TERRORIZING MAINE COAST. So long, Maine mussel mats!

The little crab that would rule the Maine coast

Listen below to dramatic testimony before the Marine Resources Committee January 31, 2013 from longtime clammer/shellfish leader Chad Coffin, president of the Maine Clammers Association and a member of Friends of the Clammers.


Maine Clammers Association presentation & Q&A, by Chad Coffin   
Complete presentation and Q&A 36 minutes 36 seconds
Broken into sections:
Part 1  4min 30sec   Part 2 4min 56sec    Part 3 5min 15sec    Part 4 6min 27sec    Part 5 5min 28sec   Part 6 5min 40sec  

Highlights of Coffin's presentation:

We are in big trouble, Chad warned the legislators, The clams and mussels of the lower intertidal shores and the fishes of the shallow subtidal waters of Maine are vanishing. 

200 square miles of mussel beds have vanished from the intertidal Maine coast. These 6" thick mussel mats with up to 16,000 mussels per square foot, were a mainstay of the Eider ducks, which too are vanishing from our environment, along with many other organisms.  

Almost all of this, Chad Coffin told the legislators, is thanks to one small animal -  the European Green Crab, aka Carcinus Maenas. It has been around Maine since the late 19th century, but became  a serious clam predator in the 1950s. 

IN THE LAST TEN YEARS the green crab population has risen exponentially.  According to Coffin, they are eating Maine's intertidal and coastal shallows empty of all other life. The crabs eat the eggs of mummichogs and silversides and other small fish. They eat juvenile lobsters.  They out compete juvenile lobsters 63 out of 65 times for food and shelter. Carcinus Maenas  larvae eat zooplankton that are the food of mussel & clam larvae and adults. Older green crabs eat young mussels and clams themselves. Casco Bay has lost its mussels from its shallows and intertidal zone and a has experie3nced99.9 percent drop in clam spat settlment


At the close of Coffin's testimony, a legislator remarked sourly that Chad will soon have to deal with two more aggressive invaders: chinese mitten crabs and Asian Shore Crabs

What is to be done? Chad's not sure, beyond: see a green crab? Kill it!

Mack Point's Emerald Triangle: wetter than they say?

Let's walk the threatened Mack Point forest, (the green triangle in the picture)  and document every little bit of wet wildness there.

If we find more than 3 acres -including the harbor's intertidal flats that DCP is including in their impact zone, then the Army Corps of Engineers cannot grant them a "general permit" that requires no hearings or any input from the people at all.

Given that  streams  from far inland cut through the proposed stank farm  and that there is much old growth soils, I think it is very likely to be much more wetlands than they identified - forested wetlands that can add up up to the amount of wetlands greater than 3 acres.

If so, that triggers the must-do-full-study requirement - which adds a year and more onto the application process .  Remember it was by discovering that the state's consultants had fibbed about the amount of  wetlands on Sears Island that  the Sears Island containerport plans of  McKernan and King were halted

Let's give it a look, shall we?