BRUNSWICK, Maine — In 2014, Brunswick clammers thought an influx of scurrying invasive European green crabs burrowing into the mud flats foretold the end of Maine’s shellfish industry.
More than two years later, because of cold winters and hours and dollars spent on careful shellfish management, Brunswick’s Marine Resources Committee finds itself in far better shape than it could have imagined. Juvenile or “seed” clams saturate 88 percent of the town’s 1,600 acres of clam flats, with the majority of those clams poised to reach 2 inches — legal harvesting size — this summer, just as the price per bushel peaks.
But a dispute between the committee and Maine’s Department of Marine Resources has left harvesters and town staff frustrated, again fearing for the sustainability of the local industry.
In December, state regulators rejected the town’s plan to close all Brunswick shellfish flats to clamming through the winter months to allow the juvenile clams to mature. The proposal, approved Dec. 2 by Brunswick’s Marine Resources Committee, was designed to protect clams and preserve harvesting licenses, Brunswick Marine Resources Officer Dan Devereaux said.
A moratorium on digging during January and February — when clam mortality is highest and diggers’ yield lowest per tide — followed by limiting digging to three days per week in March ultimately would generate more income for each digger and keep the resource viable, Devereaux said.
However, state regulators ruled that Brunswick must allow some flats to remain open for diggers who rely on clamming to pay their bills during the winter. That prompted local officials to question whether state regulators were sacrificing the long-term viability of Brunswick’s shellfish flats for the short-term benefit of a few harvesters.
“While DMR understands the premise behind closing flats to winter harvest in order to avoid exposure and preserve juvenile seed clams, the town must balance resource management with appropriate harvest opportunities,” Denis Marc Nault, director of the DMR’s Municipal Shellfish Program, wrote in a Dec. 14 letter to the town.
Nault suggested the committee submit a modified closure proposal.
Reopening long-closed area
Brunswick countered, renewing its request that the DMR reopen flats in Upper Harpswell Cove, just south of the former Brunswick Naval Air Station, where water quality samples have improved in recent years and where harvesters estimate $500,000 worth of mature clams reside.
But the DMR refused, pointing to a Department of Environmental Protection SWAT, or Surface Water and Ambient Toxins Program, report that found levels of several contaminants continue to be “of concern,” Alison Sirois of the DMR wrote in a Jan. 4 email to Devereaux.
Devereaux and members of the Brunswick MRC say the report cites measurements of contamination that Maine has never used to determine what flats are open.
Darcie Couture, a marine resources consultant and former employee of the DMR who serves on Brunswick’s Marine Resources Committee, said the DEP report cites levels of contaminants removed years ago from the 438-page National Shellfish Sanitation Ordinance, which determines whether water is safe to grow shellfish.
Couture said nowhere else in the country are these metals considered when determining whether to open a shellfish growing area.
“The DMR is making up their own rules that don’t exist anywhere else and that nobody had any input on,” she said.
Kohl Kanwit, director of DMR’s Bureau of Public Health, said Wednesday that the department cooperates with state environmental and public health regulators to test the water and considers a long list of substances outlined in the ordinance when it measures water quality but does not do additional testing for other substances unless there’s reason to believe there may be an issue.
In those cases, such as the cove south of the former Navy base, which has been known to be contaminated for years, the DMR looked at additional testing performed by the DEP and discovered “a number of results that are of potential concern,” Kanwit said.
Faced with reports that indicate high levels of some contaminants, the DMR would be irresponsible not to further test the area, Kanwit said.
“Unfortunately, that clashes sometimes with resources that are available and unfortunately there are sometimes economic consequences to how long decisions take to make,” she said.
Kanwit said the DEP, on the advice of DMR staff, already has retested the cove, among other areas, and the data should be ready within a couple of months, but that won’t be soon enough to justify reopening the cove in time for the proposed winter conservation closure elsewhere in town.
Kanwit said the DMR only learned of Brunswick’s proposal when the committee voted in December, “and unfortunately we’re responding to it as we get to or past the [proposed] closure dates.”
Still, she noted that the DMR did not deny the conservation closure outright but instead offered alternatives, including day closures or removing razor clams from the closure.
She held out hope the cove could be reclassified in time, just as the DMR reclassified an area of Frenchman’s Bay near an old tannery site.
“We partnered with the DEP to test that area and were able to reopen it, but the whole process took three, three-and-a-half, four years,” she said.
Licenses in jeopardy
Devereaux said the end result will be sending diggers out onto iced-over flats to dig clams when the price is substantially less than it would be in the summer. Furthermore, he said, digging clams now will increase the mortality rate of the juvenile clams, meaning far fewer of them will be around for harvesting when the price per bushel climbs later in the year.
Worse, he said, because surveys used to award harvesting licenses don’t count juvenile clams, the number of licenses Brunswick awards this April could decline again, as it has each of the last several years.
Scott Hawkes of Brunswick was out on the Brunswick flats Wednesday morning. He’s one of about a dozen commercial harvesters who dig all winter — “unless the flats get froze up” — usually bringing in a bushel and a half or two bushels.
Hawkes said he “can’t afford to take three months off with no pay” each winter but understands the need to protect the juvenile clams. He said he’s frustrated by the state’s decision to deny the blanket closure.
“All the water quality tests have come out good and have been coming out good,” he said. “I can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t open that up. Them clams are all mature in there, and they really shouldn’t get any bigger. They’re the perfect size, and there are plenty of them. It’s a no-brainer, really, if the state would go along with it.”
The marine resource committee will now try to develop a “Plan B” that will allow them to retain as many of the 50 commercial and 140 recreational license issued in 2015. At a public hearing Jan. 22, the committee will consider amendments to the request to the state, perhaps including the elimination of razor clams from the proposed blanket closure.