A double rainbow hangs over Maquoit Bay, as seen in late December in this photo by Eric Lee of Brunswick. (Eric Lee photo)

BRUNSWICK —  Over the decades, two things seem to have held true about Brunswick’s Maquoit Bay: It is vital ground for the area’s shellfish harvesters, and it is always changing.

Some of this is cyclic, natural change, but other changes, such as warmer waters, ocean acidification and the entrance of invasive species are man-made, leaving the fishermen and harvesters earn a living on the bay grappling with how to slow this tide.

Various sizes of Mere Point Oyster Co. oysters. (Hannah LaClaire / The Times Record)

Dan Devereaux, Brunswick harbor master and marine warden, is also one of two owners operating Mere Point Oyster Co., a growing oyster operation in Maquoit Bay in the midst of a lengthy Marine Resources hearing. Devereaux and his business partner Doug Niven applied for a 10-year, 40-acre lease in the bay that, if granted, would increase their current leased space of a ¼ acre by about 160 times and put an addition 5 million oysters in the bay at a given time. This application has sparked controversy over the past several months, with two groups of Mere Point Residents — one known as the Maquoit Bay Preservation Group and the other a collection of commercial lobster fishermen concerned that the expansion would drastically change the character and use of the bay while also infringing on valuable lobstering grounds. Hearings on the matter continue 6 p.m. Tuesday at Coffin School.

Company expansion and increased income aside, Devereaux said he and Niven “probably never would have made the decision (to expand) had we not known the environmental dynamics (of the bay) so intimately,” and added that as filter feeders, oyster aquaculture is a naturally restorative process. The waters are changing, he said, and as someone who has spent thousands of hours on the bay in the last 20 years, it’s scary to see.

“We already lost Maquoit Bay once,” he said.

The death and resurgence of Maqoiut Bay

Perhaps the biggest hit to shellfish in Maquoit Bay came in 1988 in the form of an algal bloom, something that marine science professionals in Maine remember clearly.

“I got a call (saying) ‘You’re not going to believe this, but everything in Maquoit Bay is dead,’” recalled Anne Hayden, now the senior fisheries program manager at Manomet, a nonprofit conservation group.

“It was a rare combination of events,” she said. It had been a hot day, and there was a wind event that kept the tide from out all the way, and eutrophication (the over-enrichment of a body of water from increased nutrient levels) from the watershed created an algal bloom, and the bay was without oxygen for long enough that everything died.

“It was shocking,” she said.

This anoxic event killed off 14 acres of harvestable soft-shell clams, Devereaux said, valued at somewhere around $300,000.

Marine officials and policymakers realized then that if “development in the watershed is not managed well, it will make the bay susceptible to these events,” Hayden said and they drafted the Coastal Protection Zone, to help reduce impact from land development.

Devereaux has worked toward better land conservation for the last two decades, according to Steve Walker, a Brunswick town councilor and project manager for Maine Coast Heritage Trust, but there is still work to be done.

“We need greater enforcement and monitoring, less nitrogen use in fertilizer, stream protection because it’s a direct drain into the bay,” he said. “We’re saving the wetlands in the uplands. These are things we’ve been saying for decades.”

Devereaux’s land efforts are only increasing to help reduce pollution while increasing proper land management, stewardship and education, through the help of the outdoor classroom at Brunswick High School.

Long-time grounds for mussels, clams and quahogs

Shellfish harvesters have been digging clams, quahogs and mussels in Maquoit Bay for more than a century. Between the 1940s and 1960s, according to Devereaux, it was a “prolific quahogging area” in particular.

Jim MacLeod, 75 and now retired from shellfish harvesting, was once known as Brunswick’s “Quahog King” although he’s not so sure the title is fitting today.

“Fifty years ago, quahogs were king,” he agreed. “We used to go out and look for the dot and slash in the mud” and then dig them up, he said. Before too long though, the quahog population was spotty in part due to strain on the mudflats and some over-harvesting.

Mussels too, were plentiful, Devereaux said — in the 1960s and ’70s boaters would have to take alternate routes to go around mussel beds so high they risked running aground. But the mussels were essentially dragged out of the bay by large conglomerates, leaving ecosystem destruction in their wake.

When Devereaux came aboard 20 years ago “at the tail end of the exploitation of the resources in Maquoit Bay,” the quahogs were hard to find. He has since taken significant measure to replace them. In the last five years or so, the quahogs have flourished — the waters are warmer for them, they’re larger, heavier and harder, making them more resistant to predation. Initially, clammers were resistant to quahogging, but as soft-shell clams have declined due to the warmer waters and predatory green crabs, many have come around to the lucrative per-piece market. “We’ve kept a lot of people employed,” he said.

The invasive European green crab population has exploded in Maquoit Bay over the last 10  years due to warming water temperatures. It’s believed they are responsible for the eelgrass decline as they pull it up in the search of food (file photo).

Invasive green crabs and the destruction of eelgrass

Algal blooms are still a threat to the waters, and as the waters warm and acidify, newer types of algae are coming in, causing the overall water quality, which is still regarded as excellent, to begin to degrade — but these are not the only factors harming the health of the bay.

Invasive green crabs entered the ecosystem in the 1950s, and some fishermen tried to warn of their impact.

When they came back around 2012, “they came in fast and hard and tore everything up,” Walker said. “It did a number on the eelgrass and shellfish.”

The roughly 5-inch crabs are aggressive and hungry, feasting on species like soft-shell clams and cutting through the eelgrass beds to try to reach them. Eelgrass is an underwater vegetation that serves as both a habitat for marine life and may also prevent erosion. The eelgrass population was all but decimated in 2012 and is only now starting to make a reappearance in earnest, although some fishermen like McLeod argue that eelgrass comes and goes in cycles.

There have been efforts to try to trap green crabs that have been successful, Walker said, but it takes a lot of manpower. They are also small and therefore hard to pick, meaning there’s no market for them.

MacLeod, though, thinks someone is missing out on a big opportunity to make money.

“I don’t understand why someone hasn’t stepped in to monetize them and grind them up into cat food or something,” he said.  

The move toward aquaculture

Despite algal blooms, green crabs, vital population destruction, ocean acidification and warming waters, Maquoit Bay is holding on as a “high producing shellfish grow area,” Devereaux said.

“We have a strong history of working waters.”

“We’re out here every day and seeing the changes,” he said, and to combat it, many are turning to aquaculture.

“Shellfish aquaculture is a tried and true method to restore ecology he said.” Back in the 1970s there were “billions and billions” of mussels filtering the bay, but without them, the water quality has degraded. But other bivalves like oysters have similar filtering capacities — up to 50 gallons per day per oyster.

“Brunswick has been a leader in shellfish management,” Walker said, and people like Chris Heinig have been advocating for aquaculture for decades. Heinig, a marine scientist who helped create the Coastal Protection Zone ordinance, had an oyster farm in Middle Bay as far back as 1975, he said, adding that he thinks aquaculture has a negative connotation (thanks to the legacy of salmon farming Downeast) that is undeserved.

MacLeod thinks that before long, everything will be raised on farms, even lobsters.

“Shellfishing is no longer a wild endeavor,” he said, which he insists is a good thing. “We’re losing our oceans,” he said, “it’s got to be managed.”

Walker agreed that officials need to look at more adaptive measures (and get a better handle on land use management) if they’re going to get ahead of degrading water quality, which he said has visibly declined — as a recreational diver, “you can’t see five feet in front of you.”

An oyster farm would not solve all the problems, but more suspended aquaculture would certainly help address it, he argued.

It’s all well and good to put millions of filter feeders in the bay, but the question remains, “How do we balance aquaculture with other uses of the bay?” Hayden said.

There is some recreation from jet skiers, kayakers and birders, and lobstermen do fish the area, if not all the time.

“It’s not a prime lobstering habitat, but they’re not trying to protect their best fishing grounds, they’re trying to protect all their fishing grounds,” Hayden said. “And I can’t say that I blame them.”

Ultimately, that is a question for the Department of Marine Resources to help answer Tuesday when they continue the hearings concerning Mere Point Oyster Co.’s proposed expansion. Testimony begins 6 p.m. at Coffin Elementary School, 20 Barrows St.. If need be, the meeting will continue 6 p.m. Wednesday at the same location.

“We have a long and proud history of using our coastal resources wisely,” Hayden said. “Let’s hope we continue with that goal.”

hlaclaire@timesrecord.com