04/09/2019 SHELLFISH COMMISSION Minutes

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Fisher: " We can start in early May,the Dennis transfer station is open every day from 8-4 expect on Mondays and Tuesdays." Thomas: "We are getting 1,000 bags?" Marques: " How many man hours does it take to fill that amount of bags?" Fisher: " Last year when we filled 2,000 bags we were down there for a solid month, but we didn't have any volunteers nor did we receive any AmerCorps group service days. Hopefully with a this weekend's presentation at the library we will be able to recruit some volunteers to help. With larger group I think we can get a majority of the bags done in one day. That day we will have myself, Chuck Martinson from Falmouth and Josh Reitsma for the Cape.Cod Cooperative Extension presenting their knowledge of Oyster propagation." The work on the Little River Complex is ongoing. We are installing new land-based upweller pumps, new electrical lines, and a new generator this year. All of the FLUPSYs will be taken out of the water and re- painted with antifouling e-paint. The land based silos need to be built with a new mesh size prior to receiving our Quahog order. This year we will have just over 5 million quahogs on order due to reduced funding. We were however able to receive extra funds from the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension,the county receives these monies every year to enhance the Cape's Shellfishery. There will be a new area at the end of Great River where the town's progation program will be placing larger quahog seed on the bottom using mesh trays that are elevated off the bottom using PVC feet. We also have three new FLUPSYs that were donated from the town of Falmouth these will also hopefully be used this year in Ockway Bay. Committee Comment: Thomas: "1,000 bags of cultch. Maybe this is out of ignorance but,how many oysters are we getting approximately with 1,000 bags? What do they estimate we are getting? How many are we buying?And again I know it's not an exact science, I'm just trying to get an idea and comprehend what we paying and what are getting out of this. What is their survival rate? That's the question I have." Fisher: "There is a range of estimates that we have heard. The director of the Aquaculture Research Corporation in Dennis estimates.10,000 oysters per bag. In Mashpee we have never seen those numbers,the bags we receive have anywhere from 300 oyster spat attached to 1,000. In the past I have seen bags filled with oyster cultch receive a higher set of oyster spat than the sea clam cultch. The literature estimate for remote set spat survival is around 50%. This means about half of the spat set on shell will reach harvestable size over the course of submergence in the Mashpee River. Our total number this year is estimated to be approximately 500,000 with 1,000 bags. York: "It depends on what we get from the hatchery. We normally see around 1,000 oyster per bag. Some years we saw bags with as little as 300 spat per bag,but that was a bad year at the hatchery. They said something about murky water? From our counts and estimates it is about half that survival to 2 -3 inches. So that's half mortality and half survival and the literature also states that. So we are in line with what is expected from the remote set growing technique. But,we have to analyze how many we get each year." Thoams: "What do the 1,000 bags cost us?" York: " 15,000 dollars" Thomas: "Again I'm not a mathematician,but for 15,000 dollars we are rolling the dice. If we are getting 1,000 bags we are getting anywhere from 10,000 to 10 million oysters,we have no clue. Is there another way to do it? Is there any other towns doing this. Is there enough cultch to go around? "