Tag: URI

The Secret Life of Whelks

Shared on behalf of 41°N, Rhode Island’s Ocean and Coastal Magazine, a publication of Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coastal Institute at the University of Rhode Island.

by Rudi Hempe
Photos by Melissa Devine

“Underwater, whelks are slow moving sea snails that like to pry open and devour quahogs. They are also the unlikely focus of a campaign by an energetic woman who catches them for a living to protect her chosen occupation.”

“Katie Eagan is a whelk fisherman, or as she and most of the other 200 – plus whelk fishermen in Rhode Island prefer to call themselves, a “conch fisherman,” even though the larger and quite different conchs live in far warmer waters down South.”

“At age 30, Eagan has fallen in love with a job that requires her to get up at dawn seven days a week to cruise parts of Narragansett Bay harvesting creatures that end up on plates in Asia and in the popular “snail salad” state side.”

Check out the full article here

Toxic Algae and Oyster Disease in Narragansett Bay Presentation on March 26th

Coastal State Discussion Series: Toxic Algae and Oyster Disease in Narragansett Bay

Rhode Island researchers discuss impacts of emerging algal species and marine disease that may impact the state’s seafood and water resources.

Two potential threats have emerged in Narragansett Bay waters that raise concern for both the health of Rhode Island waters and the overall state of the seafood industry.

Researchers David Borkman, marine plankton expert at the University of Rhode Island (URI) Graduate School of Oceanography, and Roxanna Smolowitz, shellfish and fish disease expert at Roger Williams University, will discuss findings of a new harmful algae species and an oyster parasite in the second event of the Coastal State Discussion Series on Wednesday, March 26, from 4 to 6 p.m. at the University Club on URI’s Kingston campus.

Borkman has been studying marine plankton in Narragansett Bay for several decades and has found a new species of algae in R.I. waters, the third observation of this species on the East Coast and the first in New England. He will discuss his findings and studies of this highly toxic species and what its presence may mean for the health of the Bay.

Smolowitz will discuss her work that looks at the transmission and impact of a new parasitic disease in the eastern oyster. This parasite has been linked to the death of oysters in Martha’s Vineyard, and its presence in Rhode Island shows a potential for significant infection of eastern oyster farms, impacting the state’s $2 million oyster industry.

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited, so please contact Meredith Haas at mmhaas@mail.uri.edu to reserve a place or for more information. The University Club is located on Upper College Road on URI’s Kingston Campus.

The Coastal State series is sponsored by Rhode Island Sea Grant and the URI Coastal Institute with the support of the URI Graduate School of Oceanography and the URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences. This lecture is also supported by the Rhode lsland Shellfish Management Plan.

Rhode Island Sea Grant is located at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography. For more information, visit seagrant.gso.uri.edu.

Following up: Use Conflicts in Narragansett Bay

This article is a follow-up to the May 15th SMP Stakeholder Meeting Presentation:
Room Enough for Everyone? Understanding Human Uses & Interactions in RI Coastal Waters
Tracey Dalton (Associate Professor, URI Marine Affairs)
Robert Thompson (Associate Professor & Chair, URI Marine Affairs)
Download the presentation (pdf).
View the presentation on Slideshare.

By Tracey Dalton

Thanks for giving us an opportunity to talk about human uses and interactions at the SMP stakeholder meeting in May.  We hope that our presentation provided some insights and generated more discussion on social carrying capacity.  Like social carrying capacity, many of the key issues raised so far in the SMP process relate to people and how they think and what they do in Rhode Island’s waters.  For those of us who devote a lot of time to studying people who work, live and spend time in coastal areas, this presents a great opportunity to help address important issues right here in RI.  We appreciate this chance to follow-up on your questions.  While we’re trying to keep things brief here, we are willing to talk more about any of these issues—feel free to contact Rob or me directly (see contact information below).

First, there were some follow-up questions on our Bayscape project that mapped human uses in the upper Narragansett Bay.  Rob and I didn’t spend too much time in our talk going over the details of that project, so we wanted to fill you in on it a bit more.  We received some funding from the RI Sea Grant to map human activities in the upper Narragansett Bay (from Conimicut point into the Seekonk River) during the summers of 2006 and 2007.  For that project, Rob, myself, and several undergraduate and graduate students traveled up and down the upper Bay on twenty-five randomly selected days each summer.  With the use of some high-tech equipment, we were able to record all activities going on on-the-water (such as quahogging, shipping, sailing, and many others) and along the shoreline (such as biking or recreational fishing).  We created maps of the activities and analyzed if any particular features (such as weather conditions, availability of parking near access points, days of the week) were influencing what people were doing.  Our study showed that this type of observational approach can provide useful insights about the levels and types of activities going on in an area, but its results are pretty specific to the upper Bay during the time of our study.  That is why we are interested in extending this earlier work to other areas in Rhode Island and applying it to specific management issues, like shellfish planning and management.  Right now, we are writing proposals to conduct some follow-up studies, and we’d be interested in hearing from you about ways to make them as useful as possible.  Feel free to send us an email or give us a call.

Second, there were some questions that related to social science more generally.  It seems that many SMP participants are more familiar with–and probably more comfortable with–the tools of natural science than those of social science.  That isn’t too surprising.  Just think, when you hear “scientist”, you probably conjure up an image of someone wearing  a white lab coat and swirling a test tube or someone trekking through a salt marsh collecting specimens.  Not many of us would think of someone sitting on a dock listening to the observations, stories, and reflections of fishermen.  But what many people don’t realize is that all three of these individuals could be doing science.  Like chemists, ecologists and other natural scientists, social scientists such as anthropologists, economists, and political scientists use systematic methods to collect data and rigorous analytical techniques to make sense of it.  Our data just happen to be on people—how they think, act, and manage their behaviors—rather than on the natural environment.  Luckily for us, there are many well-established social science techniques that we can use to collect and analyze these types of data.

Finally, the question was raised about how social science can be used to inform coastal planning and management.  This is not an easy question to answer.  In fact, there are social scientists and other researchers who specialize in this very topic–trying to understand how to effectively integrate sound science (from natural & social sciences) into resource management decisions.   Most of these researchers agree that science and management should not be thought of as two separate processes, where a study is first conducted by a scientist and then the results are used by decision makers to solve a problem.  Instead, scientists and other participants in the decision making process have to work together throughout the process to shape the science and how it might be used to solve problems.  The good news is that interactions between scientists and SMP participants have been happening throughout the SMP process.  Early discussions of SMP participants identified a number of important issues, including user conflict, social carrying capacity, compliance & enforcement, and agency coordination, that could be better understood through the use of social science tools.  Ideally, social scientists and other SMP participants will continue to interact as projects are developed, data gets collected & analyzed, and findings become part of the broader discussions on RI shellfish planning and management.

Thanks again for this chance to follow-up on our talk.  If you have questions, comments or general feedback, please contact us by email or phone:

Tracey Dalton, URI Department of Marine Affairs, dalton@uri.edu or 401-874-2434
Robert Thompson, URI Department of Marine Affairs, rob@uri.edu or 401-874-4485

CRC, Sea Grant leading effort to develop Rhode Island Shellfish Management Plan – URI News

CRC, Sea Grant leading effort to develop Rhode Island Shellfish Management Plan

Media Contact: Todd McLeish, 401-874-7892

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – July 16, 2013 — The University of Rhode Island is continuing to play a leadership role in helping the state plan for the future of its shellfishing resources through the Rhode Island Shellfish Management Plan. The effort is well underway, with the URI Coastal Resources Center (CRC) and Rhode Island Sea Grant College Program at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography serving as chief facilitators.

It’s a milestone project for the Ocean State, which claims the quahog as its official shellfish. In 2013, CRC and Sea Grant brought together state agencies, researchers from URI and Roger Williams University, and myriad stakeholders — members of Rhode Island’s traditional wild harvest industry, representatives from the growing aquaculture field, the nonprofit community concerned with restoration of shellfish in the Bay and coastal ponds, and the recreational clamming community — to collaborate on the plan.

Some of the ideas that have emerged so far call for the creation of guiding policies that: 1) build understanding of the economic, environmental and cultural values of the local resources and industries; 2) propose alternative management strategies and new mechanisms for implementation; and 3) promote science-based shellfish management decisions by increasing science activities.

The project garners interest not only for its potential to improve how shellfish are grown and harvested in state waters, but also for the support it may provide to the shellfish industry and the awareness it may raise about the social and cultural values that Rhode Islanders connect to the resource.

These concerns were front and center when the project launched late in 2012, and CRC and Sea Grant are working with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, and state agencies with regulatory responsibilities for overseeing shellfish management in the state, on the initial phase of the plan. Joining in these concerns are key supporters — the Rhode Island Foundation, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the Sharp Family Foundation/Henry and Peggy Sharpe, and the URI Coastal Institute.

Getting the public involved in the project has been a key initiative, and spring 2013 saw URI providing the public with plenty of opportunities to engage in the planning process, from stakeholder meetings to workshop sessions at which attendees could identify critical resource areas on maps. For the summer season, citizens have the chance to sign up for guided clam-digging tours. Additional events are slated for the fall.

Also in the fall, a new phase of development of the shellfish management plan will get underway, as the draft plan chapters are created and provided to the public for review and comment. But even once the plan is developed, the work is far from over. In fact, implementation — the carrying out of the plan policies by the state agencies in collaboration with stakeholder groups — will require continued improvement and enhancement of the policies as new information and data become available.

via News – University of Rhode Island.

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