Not every law enforcement officer spends their Sunday hauling debris off the shore with a group of clammers. But, that’s one of the duties of Officer Dan Sylvain, Brunswick’s Marine Warden. It’s a little different than his prior position as a patrol officer. Since last October, he’s been patrolling the mud rather than the pavement, making sure that the 60 or so commercial diggers in Brunswick are complying with the town ordinances that govern shellfish harvest.

In Maine, each town is in charge of managing its own shellfish resource in the intertidal. That means everything from conducting surveys of what’s out there to setting the number of licenses issued and the restrictions on when and where people can harvest. A shellfish license covers harvest of soft shell clams, hard-shell (quahog) clams and razor clams. Harvesting is allowed one hour before sunrise until one hour after sunset any day of the week except for Sundays between June 1 and Oct 1. Legal sizes for clams vary between species: soft shells have to be at least 2” in diameter, quahogs 1” at the hinge, and razors 4” in length. So, Dan is out there making sure that people aren’t harvesting outside of the allowed hours, that they have the proper license and that they aren’t taking undersized clams. At present, Brunswick has one of the state’s most valuable shellfish resources, so it is critical to carefully manage and enforce the rules and regulations in order to keep the resource healthy. On top of monitoring harvester activity, he also helps collect water quality samples for the Department of Marine Resources  (DMR) to ensure that the shellfish that are harvested are safe for consumption.

One of the challenges of Dan’s job is how to cover Brunswick’s 67 miles of coastline – and that’s just shoreline. The town has jurisdiction over the entire intertidal and with tides that can vary as much as 12 feet between low and high, that’s quite a large intertidal zone over those 67 miles. In fact, Dan recently helped to mark the town boundary at the mouth of Maquoit Bay and that map will soon be online. Having recently seen the demarcation in Maquoit Bay, it is amazing to look back from the boundary at how far it is from the shoreline at the Wharton Point landing. Keep in mind that this is just one of the intertidal areas in our town. We’ve got Mere Point and Middle Bays, Harpswell Sound, and the New Meadows River, to broadly name a few other of the coastal areas in town where shellfish harvesting occurs. You can view images of the Brunswick’s intertidal on the town’s website at: http://www.brunswickme.org/departments/marine-resources-and-harbor-management/

If you’ve ever tried digging for clams, you know that traveling in the intertidal is slow and sticky. And, you have to time things with the tides, which means some odd hours on the job. Dan does some of the patrolling on foot, but fortunately he has a new tool to help get from one area to another. The town was recently able to purchase an airboat – one of those amazing fan-powered crafts that can skim over the surface of the mud. That’s one of the new skills Dan had to acquire for this position. “I took this job knowing red, right return and most boats should float on water.  I have learned so much in this new position – whether it is about boats or about green crabs, shellfish survival in winter, or the importance of eelgrass – I continue to learn something new every day.”

At the end of the day, Officer Sylvain will have helped protect one of our town’s valuable natural and economic resources. But, he won’t enjoy its harvest. “The only ocean creature I eat is crab cakes,” he says. And I do believe that’s due to everything else in the cake.”