CHATHAM, Mass. — November 29, 2012 — When animals compete for the same prey, the victory usually goes to the strongest. While man may be the top predator on Earth, Chatham fishermen are finding out that status doesn't carry much credibility when it comes to ducks.
Two years ago, shellfishermen were counting on a strong set of mussel seeds that had taken hold in Chatham Harbor. They only had to wait a few months until the mussels grew to legal size, but then, tens of thousands of eiders and other sea ducks swept in and wiped them out, said Chatham Shellfish Constable Renee Gagne.
“It's a nice winter fishery for these guys,” Gagne said. Last year, the town's shellfish advisory committee brought a proposal before selectmen to use an air cannon to scare ducks off the mussel beds within the harbor. They conducted a test with the cannon but by the time selectmen were set to review the results, the birds were gone, and so were the mussels.
Next month, the shellfish committee will once again consider whether to use similar methods to drive birds away from the harbor's mussel beds and save them for fishermen. This Saturday at the Chatham Community Center, Samantha Richman, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Rhode Island, will present her findings on nonlethal ways to exclude sea ducks from mussel farms.
Richman already spoke to the shellfish advisory committee last year and the Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary sponsored a return visit as part of its effort to find ways to accommodate the needs of birds and fishermen. The sanctuary is looking for volunteers to count sea ducks and note locations where eiders are feeding. Last summer they mapped the locations of mussel beds and noted where other mussel predators, such as oystercatchers and red knots, were feeding.
“We want to get a better understanding and work on solutions over the summer,” sanctuary director Bob Prescott said, “We're hoping to get some answers for them and offer some guidance.”
Mussels are becoming an increasingly important shellfish product in the U.S., especially when grown on large aquaculture farms, said Scott Lindell, director of the Scientific Aquaculture Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. But the majority of the mussels people eat come from Canada and other countries with more than $90 million imported in 2011 compared with less than $4 million grown in the Northeast, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
Gagne said the shellfish committee is only considering protecting a relatively small portion of the mussels available to the birds, which are stopping over on their migratory routes to winter feeding grounds in southern U.S. waters. According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey, 15,000 to 20,000 birds, mostly eiders, are presently off Monomoy feeding on mussels there, Richman said Thursday.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times