Saving Seafood

MAINE: “Massive shellfish die-offs continue” along Maine coast due to red tide

October 13, 2026 — The massive algae bloom along the Maine coast is starting to dissipate, at least in some areas, but the severe impacts continue to grow.

The Friends of Casco Bay says it, along with several other groups and the state, has been monitoring the Karenia mikimotoi bloom, commonly known as red tide, in Casco Bay for over a month.

The dense blooms that were present throughout September discolored the water, lowered dissolved oxygen levels, and caused die-offs of marine organisms, particularly soft-shell clams and marine worms.

In late September, testing found high-density blooms near Harpswell. High-density blooms are generally considered those having a density of more than one million cells per liter. Testing in Maine at the time found a density of 20 million cells per liter. Video shared by Harpswell Marine Resources & Harbor Management showed very brown and murky water.

Read the full article at WMTW

MAINE: Friends of Casco Bay will add data stations to get a clearer picture of quickly changing waters

November 18, 2019 — Researchers for Friends of Casco Bay plan to add two round-the-clock water-quality monitoring stations to better track temperature, acidity and potential marine “stressors” in a busy corner of the fast-changing Gulf of Maine.

After roughly 30 years of manually collecting and testing water samples once a month, Friends of Casco Bay launched the nonprofit’s first “continuous monitoring station” near Cousins Island in Yarmouth in 2016.

The station has collected hourly data on water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and other environmental conditions as the organization sought to build upon the “snapshot” of monthly data that was clearly showing changes in Casco Bay.

“It wasn’t enough to go out once a month. We needed to start documenting the changes we’ve been seeing,” said Mike Doan, the research associate at Friends of Casco Bay who has collected much of that data for the past two decades. “We realized we didn’t have the frequency of data to really track change. If you want to get serious about documenting change, you need frequent data.”

Read the full story at The Portland Press Herald

Where have Maine’s mussels gone?

CASCO BAY, Maine  — August 30, 2015 — The survey map in Ann Thayer’s hand showed fat red splotches that wrapped around two-thirds of Bangs Island’s shoreline, meaning that the intertidal zone – the zone between the high and low water marks – was supposed to be densely packed with mussel beds. The tide was nearly three hours past high, leaving plenty of rockweed exposed.

Thayer began systematically flipping over the weed, looking for mussels, aka Mytilus edulis, attached to the rock below.

“Nothing,” she said. She said this over and over.

By the time she got back into her dinghy to row back to her Boston Whaler, she’d found only two mussels. Two where surveys from the 1970s and 1990s indicated there should be thousands, mollusks wedged into almost every nook and cranny in the rocks, the blue-hued shellfish nearly as commonplace as the barnacles living on their shells.

Thayer, who serves on the board of directors of Friends of Casco Bay, was not surprised by her findings.

Read the full story from the Portland Press Herald