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Town of Mashpee <br />Shellfish Commission 16 Great Neck Road North <br />Mashpee, MA 02649 <br />MINUTES OF MEETING 1-12-16 <br />Attendance: Peter Thomas, William Holmes, Brian Everett, Marcus Hendricks & <br />Richard York. Public: Darryl Christensen <br />Convene Meetinq: 7:00 PM <br />Public Comment: None <br />Approval of Minutes: 10-20-15 Postponed. <br />Shellfish Constable's Report: <br />. 2015 was a great year for shellfish growth due to blooms of algae that <br />were good food for shellfish. <br />More than 700 bushels of bay scallops have been harvested from Waquoit <br />Bay so far. The results of our seeding and an exceptionally good year. This is <br />by far the highest harvest since the wild scallops died off in the early 1990s. <br />We are just about out of oysters for this season due to the lack of seed in <br />2014. There was a problem with oyster larvae at the hatchery that was not <br />solved until too late in the season. We have been harvesting oysters left over <br />from previous year's seed. In June 2015, we put 2,000 bags of oyster seed on <br />shell from the ARC hatchery into the Mashpee River that grew very well, so the <br />season starting in November 2016 should be good. With funding from <br />Barnstable County Cooperative Extension, we got another 300 bags of remote <br />set oyster seed for a new project in Shoestring Bay. They also grew very well <br />with a few growing from a millimeter to 3" by the end of the season (most were <br />about 2.5" or smaller). The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe got an EPA Healthy <br />Communities grant to create oyster beds there this year. <br />The 2 million quahog seed (2 mm) from the hatchery in the spring of 2015 <br />also grew well with the largest growing to an inch. An estimated 1,386,000 were <br />planted in the usual good bottom areas in the fall, and the another million were <br />planted in the Great River family area for the Community Preservation funded <br />project. <br />The new crab trapping project went well catching mostly invasive green <br />crabs. The crabs are dormant now for the winter. <br />Water quality was relatively stable with no fish kills last year. <br />Old Business: <br />Propagation 2016 — Planning for implementation of CWNMP <br />Comprehensive Watershed Nitrogen Management Plan (CWNMP) -- $250,000 <br />for seed from October 2015 Town Meeting. 2016 plan: Continuation of the <br />