2007-Annual Town Report - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

seeding began in 1994, scallops had become so scarce Propagation Program: that people harvested just a few or no scallops on 1,000,000 quahog seed and 400 oyster spat j opening day, and that was it for the season. A scallop bags via Barnstable County/DMF 200,000 fishery has been re-established by releasing large seed bay scallop seed(Shellfish permit fees) grown in our propagation program. Seeding must be done every year to maintain the fishery, because the Shellfish Permits Issued: 844 scallop populations do not sustain themselves in the Resident/taxpayer 484 wild. About 10 bushels of scallops were harvested in Senior resident/taxpayer 314 Waquoit Bay from October through December 2007. Non-resident/taxpayer 37 f With only about a bushel taken on opening day, this Commercial 9 was by far the worst season since scallop seeding I began. Predation of the seed released in 2006 from For more information, log on to the Shellfish large numbers of blue crabs and other predators, and a Department section of the Town website at reduced number of seed released are the probable www.ci.mashpee.ma.us. causes (Falmouth did not seed their side of the Waquoit Bay, but plans to resume scallop seeding in The Shellfish Department would like to thank 2008). The propagation program also makes other the boards, commissions, departments and people of shellfish productive in areas that were previously the Town of Mashpee for your support and assistance. unproductive. The family shellfishing area in Thanks also to the Deputy Shellfish Constables, Popponesset Bay lacked shellfish prior to the start of Waterways Assistants and volunteers. Special thanks quahog seeding in the year 2000. Natural spawns to AmeriCorps Cape Cod, the Barnstable could not set there because they were swept away by County/DMF shellfish programs and the Mashpee strong tidal currents. Quahog seed from the propaga- Cable and Advanced Technology Board. tion program survived because it was grown to a large enough size before planting so that it was not swept Respectfully submitted, The members of AmeriCorps put in away. ICape P P Cod p Richard H. York, Jr. many hours working on the propagation program. Shellfish Constable AmeriCorps member Sanjoy Paul put in many more hours working on the propagation and water quality programs as an individual placement with the Shellfish Dept. Enforcement, resource management and shell- fish propagation resulted in an abundance of quahogs. The wild soft-shell clam populations have not recov- ered from the precipitous decline in 2006,but seed has set in some areas. The Mashpee Water Quality Monitoring pro- gram was upgraded by replacing 2 old failed monitor- , . ing units with 2 new state-of-the-art water quality monitoring units (sondes). They can be deployed for s months between servicing and accurately measure chlorophyll (algae), dissolved oxygen, pH, salinity, temperature and water depth every 15 minutes. Thanks to the Mashpee Cable and Advanced Mashpee River oysters in tray for harvest. Technology Board for funding these units. The Shellfish Department is also coordinating sampling and field data collection in Popponesset and Waquoit Bay for the Massachusetts Estuaries Project. In addi- tion to the Mashpee teams SMAST(University of Massachusetts,Dartmouth) and Cotuit Waders, a team from the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve was added in 2007. 157