Author: Cathy Salmento

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 32

In Maine, soft-shell clams are collected by hand and raked from the mud flats of Maine. Recently, they are becoming less plentiful. This reduction jeopardizes one of New England’s oldest and most historic coastal industries.

Maine is the soft-shell clam capital of the country. Despite this, harvests have generated less than 1.5 million pounds last year. This is the lowest total in 25 years and is down from nearly 8 million pounds at the industry’s peek in the late 1970s.

At one time, the only larger industry than clamming in Maine was the lobster industry.

“Last year was one of the lowest totals since the ’50s,” said Chad Coffin, a Freeport clammer who heads the Maine Clammers Association. “There’s still areas of the coast right now where there just isn’t a lot of clams.”

The threats to clams in Maine include an uptick in predation from green crabs and milky ribbon worms, and the increasing acidification of the ocean. Another problem is that shellfish toxins also sometimes necessitate shellfish harvesting closures, as they did in the state’s eastern coast last year and southern coast this year.

Maine soft-shell clam diggers are still hopeful for a stronger summer this year. The clammers’ association says it’s hoping for a bounce-back year because many clams seem to be reaching legal size, Coffin said.

In order to stabilize the industry long term, it is going to need to adapt, said Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias. The heightened predation from the crabs and worms has tracked in line with rising coastal water temperatures, which are predicted to keep rising, he said.

According to Beal, predators are the largest threat to clams. One way to negate this threat is by employing strategies such as putting netting around areas of mud flats where clams grow and planting clam seed in protected areas, he said.

“If we don’t adapt, we’re going to be dead in the water,” Beal said. “Unfortunately, our environment has changed.”

Maine is not the only state to harvest soft-shell clams. They are harvested in smaller numbers in Massachusetts and New York. Other states are also experiencing dwindled, like in Rhode Island, where clammers harvested barely 7,000 pounds of softshell clams in 2015 after frequently topping 100,000 pounds in the 2000s.

People are not ideal when trying to come up with a way to protect the soft-shell clams. In Maine, state biologists are working on surveys and protection projects to try to preserve the clams, said Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the state Department of Marine Resources. The number of clammers in the state has held steadily between 1,700 and 2,000 for most of the past ten years.

Coffin said he agrees with Beal that adaptation is vital if they want to revive the industry. If they wait too long the crabs and worms will make it impossible.

“It’s not that there’s not clams,” he said. “It’s that they don’t survive.”

Source: Whittle, Patrick. “Maine’s Soft-shell Clam Industry Is in Jeopardy.” Boston.com. The Boston Globe, 04 July 2017. Web. 06 July 2017.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 29

A new report published on Thursday, May 18th claims that the global agriculture industry could be losing $540 billion a year due to the spread of pests and pathogens that damage plant life.

The report was published by the Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG) at Kew in London. The report claimed that due to an increase in international trade and travel, flora has been left facing rising threats from invasive pests and pathogens. The report calls for greater biosecurity measures.

“Plants underpin all aspects of life on Earth from the air we breathe right through to our food, our crops, our medicines,” said Professor Kathy Willis, RBG Kew’s director of science.

“If you take one away, what happens to the rest of that ecosystem – how does it impact?”

The report also tries to determine what traits would help plant species cope with the climate changes.

The report finds that plants with deeper roots and higher wood density are more capable of withstanding a drought, while thicker leaves and taller grasses are better able to cope with higher temperatures.

The researchers were surprised to find that the traits that are likely to help species thrive appear to be transferable across different environments.

“The interesting fact to emerge is that the suite of ‘beneficial’ traits are, on the whole, the same the world over and are as true in a temperate forest as in a desert,” Professor Willis said in a statement.

The report was worked on by 128 scientists in 12 countries and found that 1,730 new plant species were discovered last year.

Of the 1,730 new plant species discovered, nine were of the climbing vine Mucuna which is used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. The species were found and named across South East Asia and South and Central America.

Source: Hanrahan, Mark, and Matthew Stock. “Pests and Pathogens Could Cost Agriculture Billions: Report.” Reuters. Thomson Reuters, 18 May 2017. Web. 18 May 2017.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 25

Business leaders and environmentalists alike have been preparing to argue their sides regarding Delaware’s Coastal Zone Act.

Preparations were put to us on Thursday, May 18,2017, when state legislators introduced a bill that would alter how Delaware’s signature environmental zoning law is administered. If these changes come to pass, they would only be the second made in nearly 50 years.

Some environmentalists do not support the bill and have gone so far as to state that it is even worse than they imagined.

“It’s absolutely terrifying,” longtime activist Amy Roe said. “What they’re proposing would completely and totally break the Coastal Zone Act while putting low-income, minority communities at risk of real environmental disasters.”

The Coastal Zone Conversion Permit Act, House Bill 190, if passed, would create a permitting process that would allow new industrial uses at 14 coastal sites, only one would not be located in New Castle County.

Though not all are currently active, all have in the past had heavy industry use and all are polluted. Supporters argue that the bill would encourage businesses to clean up the sites and hundreds of factory jobs.

“The state doesn’t have the funds to remediate these sites and the only way to clean them up is for a business to come in,” said James DeChene, vice president of government affairs for the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce.

“The only way they’re going to do that is if they can use the sites and then you get new industries and good-paying jobs,” he added. “It’s a win-win.”

A big problem for environmentalists is a provision that would allow nine properties with docks and piers built before 1971 to conduct bulk product transfer, which means it can move cargo such as oil or raw chemicals from ship to shore and vice versa.

The current Coastal Zone Act fought to protect the Delaware Bay and the state’s shoreline from the encroachment of heavy industrial development and specifically bans bulk product transfer.

The act’s first paragraph warns that ports and docking facilities used for that purpose would represent a significant danger of pollution and attract exactly the types of heavy industry the law sought to contain.

“For these reasons,” the law states, “prohibition against bulk product transfer facilities in the coastal zone is deemed imperative.”

Roe said she would be devastated if these shipments were now allowed.

“That would mean opening Delaware’s coast up to more ships and more trains carrying hazardous materials,” she said. “That means a much greater risk of oil spills and other incidents that could threaten our wildlife, our fishing industries and our beaches.”

Proponents counter that these fears are overblown.

“Everyone seems to focus on the fear of an oil spill,” said state Rep. Ed Osienski, D-Newark, the bill’s lead sponsor in the House. “But I’m sure with the new technology – sensors, switches, electronics, video – that when something goes wrong, it’s going to be caught quickly to eliminate any major disaster.”

The legislation, he argues, has provisions that would require owners of the properties to put up money to cover cleanup costs from spills and other contamination.

“I don’t think it will impact the state’s tourism industry at all,” he said. “There are 14 sites [in the bill] none of which I can ever imagine being tourist sites.”

What are your thoughts about the bill?

Source: Goss, Scott, and Xerxes Wilson. “Bitter Fight Expected over Coastal Zone Reform Bill.” News Journal. Delawareonline, 20 May 2017. Web. 22 May 2017.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 23

A colony of tiny bugs has taken up residence near the mouth of the Mississippi River and is killing large amounts of wetland grass that is needed to ensure the health of Louisiana’s coast. This incident is causing state and university scientists to quickly try to figure out how and why the pest, which could be a European or Asian import, got to south Louisiana, and how can they stop them from killing more of the wetland grass.

The wetlands in south Plaquemines Parish have experienced large-scale die-offs of Roseau cane. Roseau cane is a tall-growing grass that’s native to Louisiana and is the perfect habitat for fish and other wildlife. This has been going on since last fall. This grass is so important to the health of wetlands because its roots hold marshlands in place. Without this grass the already rapid erosion of the coastline will happen even quicker.

“Roseau cane is very, very important to the overall stability of our coastline,” state Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain said. “This is happening at the mouth of the Mississippi, and that’s part of the economic lifeblood of the American economy. It’s important we deal with this.”

The invasive species is a type of scale, an aphid-like insect that feeds on plant sap. Scientists do not think it is native to North America. Louisiana entomologists are collaborating with others in Europe and Asia to identify the scale.

“At the moment, we don’t know the species name of the scale nor its origin,” said Rodrigo Diaz, a Louisiana State University entomologist. “We are working with taxonomists and ecologists to understand this problem. Because of the recent discovery of the problem, there are a lot of unknowns.”

The large-scale cane deaths were first reported to Department of Agriculture and Forestry by fishers and charter boat captains in October and November. In winter, the cane dies back naturally. By February, when department scientists inspected the affected areas, the marshes should have been green with regrowth.

“We went out in airboats, and the impact was obvious,” said Joey Breaux, an environmental specialist with the department’s soil and water office. “We were seeing regrowth of just 5 and 15 percent when it should have been 80 or 100 percent. And we’ve been back since then, and it’s lots worse.”

It is unknown how many acres are affected. Charter fishing captain Eric Newman guesses that thousands of acres near Venice have experienced partial or near-total die-off.

“These places were flush with cane in November,” he said. “Now they’re almost unrecognizable. These bugs have eaten almost all of it.”

The Agriculture Department has found cane death as far north as the Bohemia Spillway. The scale has caused the biggest problems around the river’s mouth, including the Pass a Loutre Wildlife Management Area. Breton Island has also been hit hard.

Scientists are trying to determine how the scale arrived and whether environmental factors, such as changes in climate, water chemistry and storm patterns, might have affected the scale’s spread.

Source: Baurick, Tristan. “Mystery Pest Wiping out Wetlands at the Mouth of the Mississippi River.” NOLA.com. Times-Picayune, 04 Apr. 2017. Web. 13 Apr. 2017.

Swamp Stomp

Volume 17, Issue 21

The unknown pest wreaking havoc on thousands of acres of a critical wetlands grass in the Mississippi River Delta is no longer unknown.  The pest has been identified as an invasive insect from Asia. After weeks of numerous consultations with scientists from all over the world, Louisiana State University announced Thursday, April 13th that the pest is known as Nipponaclerda biwakoensis, which is a type of scale originating from Japan and China.

It is still unknown to Louisiana scientists just how the scale arrived in Louisiana. The scientists have yet to discover how to stop the spread of the pest. Since fall, the scale has destroyed copious amounts of roseau cane, a tall grass considered vitally important for fish and bird habitats and for the stability of the fast-eroding delta. If the spread of the pest is not controlled soon, scientists and Plaquemines Parish residents worry the loss of the cane could speed up coastal erosion.

The most damage to the cane is located in the far south end of Plaquemines, including the Pass a Loutre Wildlife Management Area, where about 80 percent of the preserve’s 110,000 acres are affected by the pest. So far, the scale has spread as far north as the Bohemia Spillway.

“We’re the first on the North American continent to see it first, unfortunately,” said Joey Breaux, an environmental specialist with the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

LSU says that entomologist Scott Schneider is the scientist who first identified the scale. Schneider works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Systematic Entomology Laboratory in Beltsville, Md.

The British Natural History Museum’s John Noyes has discovered what could turn out to be the scale’s weakness. He believes that a type of tiny parasite, also native to Japan and China, preys upon the scale. The parasite, known by the scientific name neastymachus japonicus, appears to accept no other host but the particular type of scale now invading south Plaquemines.

Breaux said that the parasite could be released in Plaquemines to kill the scale. Unfortunately, this option comes with many unknowns, such as availability and price.

“Japan probably doesn’t have a batch of the parasite ready to ship,” Breaux said. “And if they did, it’d be expensive.”

If the parasite does not turn out to be a viable option, there are others. These include controlled marsh fires and pesticides. These other options come with their own set of risks.

“We want something affordable, do-able and environmentally friendly,” Breaux said. “In the meantime, we’re losing more roseau. We’ve got to get at it and do something.”

While we can all agree that something must be done and fast, what do you think is the best option for dealing with the scale? Can you think of any other ways of dealing with the scale? Do you think Louisiana scientists are handling the situation properly? In the meantime, what is your biggest concern regarding the presence of the scale?

Source: Baurick, Tristan. “Scientists Identify Pest Laying Waste to Mississippi River Delta Wetlands Grass.” NOLA.com. NOLA.com, 13 Apr. 2017. Web. 17 Apr. 2017.