FREEPORT, Maine — January 29, 2014 — A series of studies commissioned by the Town Council and conducted over the summer yielded new information about the invasive green crabs plaguing Maine's coastal waters, but was largely compromised by timing and a lack of maintenance, according to a preliminary report.
Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias, reported on the studies earlier this month to the Town Council, which allocated $100,000 in 2012 for ongoing research of the crabs and their effects on the local soft-shell clam population in particular.
Clammers have speculated for several years that the crabs have decimated as much as two-thirds of their productive clam flats. A resource survey conducted in Spar Cove in June supported those claims, Beal said.
"The soft-shell clams resource is lacking or missing in the mid-to-lower intertidal area, and the only clams that are available are generally in the upper intertidal, where they don't grow as fast and where habitat is more limiting," Beal said. "Once that's been fished out, there isn't a lot of the resource to replace it."
Two experiments conducted in Little River were designed to study the ability of nets and fences to protect clams from crabs. And while they showed that both methods can be used to deter crabs, they failed to provide more detailed insights.
That was partly because of timing. The experiments, designed to begin in late spring, required permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When those took longer to acquire than anticipated, the start of the work was delayed until mid-July. By then, many of the clams were gone.