Most of the sessions didn’t start until the next day, but the room at the Samoset was packed with people interested in Maine’s shellfish resource. They were here for the Shellfish Focus day of the Maine Fishermen’s Forum, the opening session on a sunny Thursday morning on the last day of February.

Maine’s shellfish industry covers a diversity of species, the most common of which is the soft shell clam, but also includes hard-shell or quahog clams, mahogany clams, surf clams, razor clams, oysters, scallops, blue mussels, periwinkles, whelks and moon snails. That’s a lot of different species each with different harvest methods and rules and regulations.

The day opened with remarks from the chair of the state’s Shellfish Advisory Council, better known as “the ShAC”. The ShAC includes harvesters, dealers, growers, and municipal representatives from across the state that meet several times a year to discuss common concerns. They make recommendations to the Commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) about matters that concern the state’s shellfish industry. Because most shellfish species are managed locally in Maine, this is an important group that pulls together people involved from different parts of the coast.

The history of local shellfish management began back in 1821 when the state of Maine gave authority to each town to control shellfish harvest in their intertidal zone. That means that each town is in charge of managing its own resources – unlike the state or regional level regulations that govern many of Maine’s fisheries. For its nearly 3500 miles of coastline, Maine has a lot of coastal towns, which means a lot of different shellfish programs – over 80 in total. Some of these are single towns and others are partnerships between towns. Each program is responsible for setting the number of commercial licenses it issues and for surveying its resource on a regular basis. Many municipal shellfish programs like Brunswick also undertake conservation projects like reseeding or closing areas during the winter to let the resource rest. And many of them, also including Brunswick, require that license holders participate in these conservation activities.

Though they share the same mission, there are some pretty big differences between the towns’ programs. For starters, some are quite large and others quite small. Waldoboro tops the list with about 160 license holders. But there are more than 20 towns that have less than 20 commercial license-holders. Brunswick has one of the larger totals with around 60 licenses. There are big differences in revenue as well. Brunswick ranks high here yet again with over $4 million dollars in revenue. This variability makes a good case for having municipal control, but it isn’t always easy for each town to take on the duties of this management. There was discussion about what the needs of each of these programs are and the challenges of meeting them. Some of these needs are being addressed by grants that help towns with things like shellfish recruitment projects, improving their surveying techniques, and mitigating coastal pollution.

Other Shellfish Day sessions focused on science, education and outreach. They included the announcement of a new shellfish handbook produced by Maine Sea Grant that will be coming out this spring. To receive an electronic copy, you can email umseagrant@maine.edu. Finally, the day concluded with a poster session from a variety of shellfish education projects around the state. I was happy to be able to share the work of the Brunswick High Schools’ Student Shellfish Initiative project through a display of student-created posters on green crabs and soft-shell clams as well as videos of seeding the flats at the Wharton Point outdoor classroom (ilovemudflats.wordpress.com). It was an exciting day to be at the Forum and to see the enthusiasm for the innovative work in the industry, ideas for improvements and collaboration, and interest in education at all levels.