Marsden Brewer reports in the Fishermans Voice (Winter 2000/1)

November update

Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Bill Crowe, a good friend of mine and
the editor of this distinguished fishing community based newspaper, I've
been allowed the opportunity to have a little space every other month to
update his readers on the progress of this fishing community based wild
stock enhancement project.

First a little about myself, I am a commercial fisherman, I have also
been known to buy and sell a little seafood from time to time. I've
noticed that it doesn't matter rather you are trying to catch, buy, or
sell seafood it's always a little easier when there is some product
around. I am also a Selectman in the Town of Stonington.. I understand
that healthy fisheries are essential to healthy fishing communities.

Next a little about the participants. The oldest is eighty, a couple
won't admit to any more than seventy, there are a few from every decade
right down to pre-teens. The youngest is twenty months. He came up with
his dad to look over how we were rigging the gear and keep an eye on,
and share a bag of chips with, our old border collie while his dad
helped get the bags stuffed. A week later the young fella went out with
his mom and dad and his big sister on a Sunday afternoon. Mom drove the
boat, which she is still talking about, dad rigged the gear, while the
little fella and his sister watched, helped, and stayed out of harms
way. When the little fella goes out with his dad early next summer to
let the juvenile scallops go, he should be old enough to remember that
day for the rest of his life. With a little luck he will grow up knowing
no other way than responsible stewardship of our oceans resources.

Where do the participants come from? They come from towns around Saco
Bay, towns like Saco, Scarborough, Old Orchard Beach. They come from
towns like Limington, Walpole, Eddington, Perry, Dennysville, and
Cutler. They come from places like Isle au Haut, Stonington, Deer Isle,
Sunshine, Sunset, Brooklin, Brooksville, Penobscot, Cape Rosier, and
Harborside. They share many things in common, among them the desire to
develop a sustainable fishery, and an interest in providing a future for
the fishing community.

Where the project is now. The spat collectors are set, around 3200 of
them. There may still be a participant or two that will set a few bags
along side bags they set earlier to see if they can get a better
understanding of the bell shaped settlement curve. Some have already set
strings spacing out the setting of the bags in a single string over a
period of three weeks. Scallop Larval Settlement is time specific and it
is to late this season for any new effort this fall. Some fishermen are
looking at different parts of the water column to begin to understand
where the most efficient spat collection occurs. Some fishermen are
researching different ways of increasing larval supply in local gyres.
Over the next month or so I can think of about fifty fishermen that are
going to question what they are doing when they are carefully moving the
gear to areas that are out of the way of mobile gear and they have to
accept that the scallops are still to small to identify with the naked
eye.

None of the project participants are doing this because they have to.
There is no law that tells them that they have to do this and none of
the participants are getting paid to participate. They are doing it
because they want to. This project relies on Self-Governance, that
doesn't mean we take the law into our own hands it's actually quite the
opposite. Self-Governance for the sake of this project is not another
governing body, we have plenty of them, instead it is people governing
themselves, guided by basic principals, working within the law to
develop a sustainable fishery.

***********

February Update
Wild Scallop Stock Enhancement Project
Marsden Brewer, Coordinator

There has been a fair amount of complaining about the price of Scallops
the last few weeks around the docks and on the radio. With boat prices
of $4.50 to $5.00 a pound most will agree, that with no more scallops
than there are around it really isn't worth the effort.

What we are feeling is the effects of a World Economy and I suspect that
we better get used to it and learn how to compete in it. The bottom line
is that Maine scallop production doesn't control the world market. Other
areas of the world are aggressively managing their scallop resource with
an emphasis on production, and until we do the same we will continue to
fall behind. Production is not how many you can catch, it is how many
you can produce sustainably. The reason for this project is to increase
scallop production in the State of Maine so Maine fishermen can compete
in a world economy.

Over the last couple of months many of the fishermen involved in spat
collection up and down the coast have had to move their spat bags from
the areas where they collected the larval scallops to safe areas to
winter them over out of the way of the winter fisheries. What has been
noticed from Saco to Bristol to Stonington is that we have had a fairly
good set in all the areas. Maybe if we can get some licensing problems
with the Commissioner straightened out we will be able to get some
samples counted to develop our settlement data layer and have some
numbers to share with you.

By far the most exciting part of this project this winter has been
listening to the participants telling about how supportive other
fishermen have been of what they are doing.

One group of fishermen working together didn't use enough weight on
their anchors. During the gales of late October - early November most of
their gear dragged about a mile to the Southwest, one line went two
miles. Much of the gear dragged into lobster gear. The Lobstermen tended
to the gear like a bunch of mother hens and took the time to unsnarl the
mess and lug the gear back to where they had seen it earlier.

A fisherman from Scarborough and a fisherman from Stonington both told
the same story about how another fisherman in each area got tangled up
in a line of spat bags. Rather than to disturb the gear both fishermen
let their traps sit until the juvenile scallops were developed enough
and weather conditions were right to be moved. In a business where all
to often Dexter Russell rules, and management seems focused on managing
the fishermen and not the fish, it has been rewarding to see fishermen
working together up and down the coast to develop a sustainable fishery.

**********

April Update
Wild Scallop Stock Enhancement Project
Marsden Brewer, Coordinator

The project is entering a busy time of the year. It is when the samples
will be counted so we can produce our chart that gives a view of
settlement in and around our bays. Over the winter I have been in touch
with the participants in Penobscot, Blue Hill, and Jericho Bay and each
fisherman marked on a chart where he set his spat bags. Now it is time
to get sample bags counted.

This year will be getting some help from Linda Kilch and her two Marine
Science classes at Deer Isle Stonington High School to get the counts.
What helps make this possible is the dedication of some outreach time
from Dana Morse, Extension Associate Maine Sea Grant Program/UMaine
Cooperative Extension, Darling Marine Center. The outreach program of
this organization and others and their commitment to work with fishermen
has been an essential part of the success of this project. There is also
another High School in mid coast Maine that has contacted Dana to help
and we will be sending some samples down that way to complete the
counting for our data layer. We "the participants" tip our hats to those
that have come forth to help.

Once I get back the numbers on the marked sample bags the settlement
amounts will be matched up with the locations. This information will go
to the DMR lab in Boothbay where it will be put in a GIS mapping format.
This will create a dated data layer that can someday be overlaid with
oceanographic data to help us understand a little about the relationship
between oceanography and settlement.

Last year the focus of the project was to see if we could catch scallop
spat. We found out that it looked like we could in certain areas. We had
one bag with over 5000 juvenile scallops in it. This year we have
learned that they are not everywhere, one fisherman took an extensive
look at Penobscot Bay from North Haven to Cape Rosier and found poor
settlement everywhere, but because the fishermen involved shared what
they learned about settlement last year we were able to get about 2000
bags in good settlement areas.

The result is that we have what looks to be in excess of four million
juvenile scallops to put back on bottom this year. The fishermen
involved have been looking over areas all winter to decide where they
will spread the scallops that they have caught looking for areas that
could use a little help, there have been lots of them, and paying close
attention to the amount of predators ,starfish and crabs. This
information will not be recorded as it belongs to the individual
fisherman and they aren't interested in creating a chart of where to
catch scallops.

Worldwide scallops tend to stay within three miles of where they are
planted. In order to better understand the movement of scallops in our
bays we have put together a couple of experiments. I'll tell you about
them next time.

***********

May Update
Wild Scallop Stock Enhancement Project
Marsden Brewer, coordinator

The last month has been a busy one. The participants have produced 58
samples for counting to produce our settlement data layer. We have sent
samples to the University Of New Hampshire's Coastal Marine Lab the
Darling Marine Center, and the Beals Island Regional Shellfish Hatchery
for counting. In exchange for the counts for our settlement data layer
the different organizations end up with live juvenile scallops to use as
they please for education and research. We do ask that the juvenile
scallops are not used for bottom culture in lease areas.

We also took some samples to our local High School. We were fortunate
enough to be able to talk four scientists from different organizations
into coming down to help. They brought themselves and all the equipment
necessary to do volume metric counts and collect size frequency data,
right down to the strained seawater. It made for a rewarding day as I
got to watch some light bulbs go off in some of our next generation of
fishermen's heads. We are pretty lucky up here in Maine to have
scientists with a genuine interest in our fishermen and our communities
children.

I should get the information back in the next couple or three weeks so
it can be matched up with the bag locations and sent to the Maine
Department of Marine Resources Lab in Boothbay Harbor to be put into a
G.I.S. format that will be compatible with other projects going on in
our area. Hopefully in time this information will be able to help us
understand how oceanography effects larval settlement in our area.

In June we are planning a reseeding project in the upper Penobscot Bay.
This will involve a couple hundred thousand juvenile scallops a few
scientists and their mates, and a few fishermen and their families.
During the three hour boat ride up the bay we will be emptying out the
bags, getting an "official" count on the scallops, and doing a whole lot
of tagging of individual scallops. When we get there we are planning on
using a sled cam to do a video transect of the bottom and hopefully see
the fruits of our labor on bottom. During the ride down the bay we will
enjoy a down east lobster dinner. Should be a good time.

In order to better understand scallop movements around the bay another
project we are going to try this year will be a fishermen's tagging
project. In this project I will receive a known number of sequentially
numbered tags and some of the special glue that is used to hold them on.
I will issue them to interested fishermen so that they may tag a few of
the scallops that they release. I will keep track of who has what tag
numbers and the individual fisherman will keep track of where they put
them. In the event that one of these numbered tags are recovered down
the road I will be notified as to the number and the location retrieved,
that information will then be passed along to the fishermen that did the
tagging in return for the location released. As we have been asked to
trust government for years with often questionable results this project
has been nicknamed "Trust let's Build some".

The date has been set for our annual meeting. It will be on June 28th at
6:30 at the Stonington Gym it is a public meeting where we will share
what we have learned over the last year. We will also get a chance to
see how big some of the scallops that were caught during our first year
are now. It was twenty months ago when we set our first spat collectors
around here and much has happened. Hope to see you there!