Hurricane Island Center sends us this news which is either a Christmas gift from the past year or a New Year's insight into where the future of Maine coastal economies lie.
"Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership Aquaculture Manager Madison Maier presented recently at the Eastern Maine Skippers Program fall cohort meeting at Schoodic Institute. Madison presented about a recent project collaborating with Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries and Colby College to study where young Atlantic sea scallops (Placopecten Magellanicus) exist in Maine waters.
We are so excited to celebrate our summer research intern Olivia Trahan winning first prize at The Coastal Society conference in North Carolina! This poster is titled "Species Richness and Abundance of Ascidian Species in Larval Collector Bags from Penobscot Bay of P. magellanicus" from Olivia's project on Hurricane this year. During the summer, Olivia studied the spat bags that we deploy in the fall to collect tiny juvenile sea scallops. We typically see a variety of other species that find a home on our spat bags when we haul them up in the spring/summer including ascidians, which are commonly known as sea squirts. Olivia was able to make use of our existing efforts to collect scallop spat and give us a better understanding of these 'biofouling' ascidians, which can make fishing and aquaculture gear much heavier
and harder to haul."
The gift of data, the encouraging interest of our young people in exploring new ways to deal with our environment. How encouraging!