March 11, 2019 — Last summer’s fleet departure for the fishing grounds looked like a parade, fisherman John Our said, with 30 vessels leaving and returning at the same time at Aunt Lydia’s Cove. They were trying to make the most of a diminished tidal window, as shifting channels and sandbars made it hard to find water deep enough at either of the harbor’s two inlets for the commercial fishing fleet to get from the municipal fish pier to the Atlantic Ocean fishing grounds.

“It’s not working, and it’s really affecting everybody’s business,” Our said.

Things aren’t going to get better anytime soon, for fishermen or waterfront property owners, experts told a full house Thursday night at an unveiling of preliminary findings from an ongoing study of coastal resiliency and adaptive management for Chatham’s east-facing shoreline. The nearly $250,000 study, with a $188,122 grant from the state’s Coastal Zone Management agency, is scheduled to be completed this June. It uses computer modeling combined with site work to assess current conditions and look into the future of Chatham Harbor and Pleasant Bay and what steps the town can take to mitigate impact.

John Ramsey, the principal coastal geologist at Applied Coastal, the Mashpee-based consultants Chatham hired to do the study, said analysis showed that Chatham Harbor is operating as two separate systems.

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