December 23, 2019 — Shannon Meseck, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stood in a T-shirt, jeans and fishing boots as winter sunlight streamed in through the greenhouse windows of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy aquaculture lab. A couple of steps beyond the windows, the Cape Cod Canal raced by, a flat gray sheet of swirls and eddies.
Eight weeks of vital research on ocean acidification were drawing to a close, and Meseck was relieved and pleased. She’d already completed similar research on oysters and surf clams, but analyzing Atlantic sea scallops, the region’s preeminent fishery, was a tougher task.
The seawater at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s lab in Milford, Connecticut, was too warm for scallops, and filters on the water pumped into the lab stripped out the plankton and algae the scallops feed on. Milford Laboratory director Gary Wikfors, who had done some consulting with the academy when it set up its aquaculture lab years earlier, contacted the academy about a partnership. The research is being funded by a three-year NOAA grant of $172,000 annually.