Saving Seafood

MAINE: As gulf waters warm, could quahogs be the next big shellfish product?

August 20, 2021 — A new research project is trying to determine whether a species of hard-shell clam, quahogs, can thrive in enough abundance off Maine’s coast to make for a new business opportunity.

The Brunswick office of Manomet, an environmental research nonprofit headquartered in Plymouth, Mass., is partnering with the University of Maine and the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay to study the presence of quahog DNA in the water column.

Determining the level of DNA is considered useful to understanding to what extent the clams are making themselves at home in the gulf.

The study of DNA in this context is called “eDNA” or “environmental DNA,” Marissa McMahan, a senior fisheries scientist with the Brunswick branch of Manomet, told Mainebiz.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

‘eDNA’ is taking a new look at Maine’s ocean ecosystem

August 12, 2021 — It’s no secret that the Gulf of Maine has been warming in recent years. While the rise in temperature is a concern for some ocean species like lobster, it’s a more suitable environment for others, like quahogs.

The hard-shell clam can be found up and down the east coast but Director of Fisheries at Manomet Marissa McMahan said quahogs could thrive and spawn in Maine.

In 2018, Manomet and the town of Georgetown’s Shellfish Conservation Committee brought 50,000 adult quahogs to Robinhood Cove in hopes of creating a self-sustaining population.

On Tuesday, it was time to use environmental, or ‘eDNA’ to check and see if there was an abundance of the species and if any spawning occurred.

“If this technology can in fact tell us about shellfish spawning events then that’s something that we can utilize in shellfish management and conservation coast-wide,” McMahan said.

Working in partnership with the University of Maine and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, the scientists collected water samples at various depths around the cove.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Environmentalists propose Mainers farm quahogs to beat pests

October 28, 2019 — Few things are as embedded in Maine’s culture – or its mud – as clams, and an environmental group thinks the key to saving the shellfish might be growing a different kind of bivalve along the state’s coast.

Manomet, based in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is proposing the shellfish shift as a way to beat predators that plague Maine’s clam diggers. Seafood lovers have sought Maine’s softshell clams in chowders and clam rolls for decades, but wild harvesters are collecting fewer of those clams, in part because of the spread of crabs and worms that prey on them.

Manomet thinks the answer might lie in the aquaculture of quahogs, which are a harder species of clam associated more with Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The group is working with four shellfish farmers along the Maine coast to grow quahogs, study the results and bring the bivalves to market.

“Wouldn’t it make sense to branch out and do this new species? One of the things that attracted us to quahogs was they seem to be less susceptible to predation from green crabs and marine worms,” said Marissa McMahan, marine fisheries division director for Manomet, referencing a pair of pests that eat softshell clams.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald

Another outside crab species turns up in Maine waters

October 15, 2019 — A scientist with an environmental group says she has found what she believes is the first recorded appearance of a potentially damaging species of crab in Maine waters.

Marissa McMahan of the Massachusetts-based group Manomet said she located the smooth mud crab this month on a research trip. The crabs are typically found south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. They can pose problems for aquaculture businesses because they prey on young oysters — a species of high economic value that is grown in Maine.

McMahan collected the single specimen, and it’s still alive. She said it’s too early to know how the animal ended up in the New Meadows River in West Bath, but it’s important to monitor for more of them.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

As Gulf of Maine warms, will black sea bass make up for declines in lobster?

May 15, 2018 — The Gulf of Maine’s warming waters could mean that new fisheries are coming to Maine.

The Bangor Daily News reported that many lobster fishermen, concerned about a possible drop-off in the lobster resource, are looking at other species like Jonah crab and black sea bass. In 2016, fishermen in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island together earned $2.38 million from their black sea bass fishery.

If Maine were to develop a black sea bass fishery, she said, fishermen could use techniques and equipment that are very similar to what they use now to catch lobster, which would help with the transition, Marissa McMahan, a senior fisheries scientist for the environmental science nonprofit Manomet, told the BDN.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

 

The Unexpected Tastiness of the Green Crab

August 10, 2017 — Maine’s problem with the invasive European green crab (Carcinus maenas) is not a new one, nor is the idea of finding a commercial use for them. It’s been a tough go for a long time; mostly because it has not been easy to find a market that will pay enough to make it worthwhile for a fisherman to gear up and fish a gang of traps. Recently though, there is a push to make green crabs attractive as a menu item, and I am glad to write that that there is a beam of light sneaking in through that cloudy scenario. The reason? Green crabs can be downright delicious.

To be more specific, we’re talking about soft-shelled green crab, similar to what you’d find with blue crabs down in the mid-Atlantic. Work led by Marissa McMahan, a Georgetown, Maine native and a PhD. candidate at Northeastern University, has taken this product further than anyone else in the state. Since she comes from a fishing family, her scientific and industry connections have been helpful, and the results to date have been quite tasty.

Her own introduction into the topic came courtesy of Jonathan Taggart, also a Georgetown citizen. He discovered fried green crabs at a restaurant in Venice, Italy, and brought the idea to Marissa. Venice is the center of the Italian soft-shell crab trade, and they have a very closely-related species of green crab, Carcinus estuarii. A key in the Italian industry is that Venetian fishermen have identified visible indicators that precede shedding – a fisherman can look at an individual crab and know to a fine degree how soon that crab will molt. This key step has been known for blue crabs in the U.S. for many years, but is only now being understood for green crabs.

Read the full story at NOAA Sea Grant