Latest news with #GMRI
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tracking Maine's wild mussel beds: declining or retreating into the deep?
May 31—The wild blue mussel beds that once blanketed Maine's dynamic intertidal zone are disappearing, driven out by warming water that not only hurts the mussels themselves but benefits one of its chief predators, the highly invasive and always hungry green crab. Scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute want to know if the intertidal disappearing act is a sign the blue mussel population is in decline or in retreat, with its local beds gradually moving out of the easy-to-spot intertidal into the colder waters of the more far-flung subtidal zone. "For the last 10 to 15 years, everybody has been saying mussels are disappearing," said research associate Aaron Whitman. "We think the beds are just moving out past the low tide line. But just because you don't see them twice a day doesn't mean they're not out there." A 2017 study estimated Maine's wild blue mussel population has dropped 60% since the 1970s. Like baby lobsters, however, the mussel beds may have simply traded warmer for cooler, fleeing the warm intertidal for the somewhat cooler subtidal, inch by inch, one generation at a time. But that makes the beds much harder to find. That is why GMRI is enlisting the help of citizen volunteers to help it find, measure and track these subtidal beds, the edges of which are only visible at extremely low tide, so it can document the health of the local population, especially in a changing climate. On Friday morning, Whitman and Carissa Maurin, GMRI's aquaculture program manager, led a group of two dozen employees of M&T Bank out to Mackworth Island in Falmouth to document its subtidal mussel bed during peak minus tide, or one that was about a foot lower than normal. "I love the environment," said Roxanne Gray, a mortgage originator in the Brunswick branch. "I've been a Mainer my entire life, so for me, being able to be a part of what keeps Maine a beautiful, healthy state, is really important." They documented conditions (muddy), recorded the presence of predators (green crabs) and measured individual mussels (from three-quarters of an inch to almost five inches) at a mussel bed that Whitman said appears to have shrunk in size since GMRI surveyed it last year. The bed has slowly moved, too, not just into colder subtidal waters but around the island itself, according to old state survey maps. The maps date to the early 2000s, which is the last time Maine surveyed mussel beds. Updating the state list will be harder now that many beds are submerged most of the time. That is why GMRI encourages groups like M&T as well as everyday Mainers all along Maine's 3,500-mile coastline to monitor their coastal areas on minus tide days, record what they see (even if there aren't any blue mussels), and share it by entering the data into GMRI's Ecosystem Investigation Network. "We can't just take our boat and map all of Casco Bay, much less the rest of the state," Maurin told M&T employees gathered around her in ankle-deep mud. "We don't have that much time, or enough staff. So knowing where to start looking is super important. That's where you come in." M&T offers all of its 22,000 employees 40 hours of paid time to do volunteer work like this, according to Regional President Philip Cohen, who was trudging across the flats alongside employees Friday despite a braced knee from a recent surgery. GMRI scientists will use that information to decide where to employ acoustic equipment to investigate a mussel bed, Whitman said. The equipment bounces sound waves off the sea bed and measures the echo, much like a dolphin does, to detect different bottom types and find active mussel beds. Mussels are important because people like to eat them, making them a part of Maine's fishing economy. And the wild mussel beds are critical suppliers of the spat, or fertilized eggs, needed to seed Maine's next mussel crop, Maurin said. Oyster farmers can get spat from hatcheries; Maine's mussel farmers need wild spat. Mussel beds provide critical habitat for juvenile fish, with the kelp and seaweed that grow there able to hide them from predators. Mussels also function as living water filters, removing excess nitrogen and phosphorus, while sequestering carbon into their shells. While beds are retreating into colder, deeper waters, the Gulf of Maine is also rising. The gulf is warming three times faster than the planetary average and rising about 2.5 times faster in recent years than it did over the last century, according to the Maine Climate Council. Some data suggests deeper waters in the Gulf of Maine may be cooling because of a recent shift in currents, while surface temperatures that affect mussel beds have been rising fast. About 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean, causing the water's internal heat to increase, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Heat stored in the ocean causes the water to expand, which is responsible for one-third to one-half of global sea level rise. The sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine in 2021 and 2022 were the warmest on record. The gulf spent 97% of 2022 in a marine heat wave. With an annual average of 52 degrees, the surface temperature of the gulf is about 2 degrees hotter now than it was 30 years ago. Copy the Story Link
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tracking Maine's wild mussel beds: declining or retreating into the deep?
May 31—The wild blue mussel beds that once blanketed Maine's dynamic intertidal zone are disappearing, driven out by warming water that not only hurts the mussels themselves but benefits one of its chief predators, the highly invasive and always hungry green crab. Scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute want to know if the intertidal disappearing act is a sign the blue mussel population is in decline or in retreat, with its local beds gradually moving out of the easy-to-spot intertidal into the colder waters of the more far-flung subtidal zone. "For the last 10 to 15 years, everybody has been saying mussels are disappearing," said research associate Aaron Whitman. "We think the beds are just moving out past the low tide line. But just because you don't see them twice a day doesn't mean they're not out there." A 2017 study estimated Maine's wild blue mussel population has dropped 60% since the 1970s. Like baby lobsters, however, the mussel beds may have simply traded warmer for cooler, fleeing the warm intertidal for the somewhat cooler subtidal, inch by inch, one generation at a time. But that makes the beds much harder to find. That is why GMRI is enlisting the help of citizen volunteers to help it find, measure and track these subtidal beds, the edges of which are only visible at extremely low tide, so it can document the health of the local population, especially in a changing climate. On Friday morning, Whitman and Carissa Maurin, GMRI's aquaculture program manager, led a group of two dozen employees of M&T Bank out to Mackworth Island in Falmouth to document its subtidal mussel bed during peak minus tide, or one that was about a foot lower than normal. "I love the environment," said Roxanne Gray, a mortgage originator in the Brunswick branch. "I've been a Mainer my entire life, so for me, being able to be a part of what keeps Maine a beautiful, healthy state, is really important." They documented conditions (muddy), recorded the presence of predators (green crabs) and measured individual mussels (from three-quarters of an inch to almost five inches) at a mussel bed that Whitman said appears to have shrunk in size since GMRI surveyed it last year. The bed has slowly moved, too, not just into colder subtidal waters but around the island itself, according to old state survey maps. The maps date to the early 2000s, which is the last time Maine surveyed mussel beds. Updating the state list will be harder now that many beds are submerged most of the time. That is why GMRI encourages groups like M&T as well as everyday Mainers all along Maine's 3,500-mile coastline to monitor their coastal areas on minus tide days, record what they see (even if there aren't any blue mussels), and share it by entering the data into GMRI's Ecosystem Investigation Network. "We can't just take our boat and map all of Casco Bay, much less the rest of the state," Maurin told M&T employees gathered around her in ankle-deep mud. "We don't have that much time, or enough staff. So knowing where to start looking is super important. That's where you come in." M&T offers all of its 22,000 employees 40 hours of paid time to do volunteer work like this, according to Regional President Philip Cohen, who was trudging across the flats alongside employees Friday despite a braced knee from a recent surgery. GMRI scientists will use that information to decide where to employ acoustic equipment to investigate a mussel bed, Whitman said. The equipment bounces sound waves off the sea bed and measures the echo, much like a dolphin does, to detect different bottom types and find active mussel beds. Mussels are important because people like to eat them, making them a part of Maine's fishing economy. And the wild mussel beds are critical suppliers of the spat, or fertilized eggs, needed to seed Maine's next mussel crop, Maurin said. Oyster farmers can get spat from hatcheries; Maine's mussel farmers need wild spat. Mussel beds provide critical habitat for juvenile fish, with the kelp and seaweed that grow there able to hide them from predators. Mussels also function as living water filters, removing excess nitrogen and phosphorus, while sequestering carbon into their shells. While beds are retreating into colder, deeper waters, the Gulf of Maine is also rising. The gulf is warming three times faster than the planetary average and rising about 2.5 times faster in recent years than it did over the last century, according to the Maine Climate Council. Some data suggests deeper waters in the Gulf of Maine may be cooling because of a recent shift in currents, while surface temperatures that affect mussel beds have been rising fast. About 90% of global warming is occurring in the ocean, causing the water's internal heat to increase, according to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Heat stored in the ocean causes the water to expand, which is responsible for one-third to one-half of global sea level rise. The sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine in 2021 and 2022 were the warmest on record. The gulf spent 97% of 2022 in a marine heat wave. With an annual average of 52 degrees, the surface temperature of the gulf is about 2 degrees hotter now than it was 30 years ago. Copy the Story Link
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Artists use midnight performance to draw attention to rising seas
May 28—A group of painters, dancers and sculptors waded through the shin-high tidal flood waters of Portland's waterfront after midnight Tuesday to highlight fair-weather sea level rise and the need to document climate change impacts that happen when most people are sleeping. The king tide, projected to rise 11 feet, 6 inches, flooded the wharves, piers and parking lots along Commercial Street early Wednesday. Garbage truck drivers dodged puddles. Bar workers waded out to parked cars. And in certain areas, artists and citizen scientists found inspiration. "I grew up in Camp Ellis and literally watched a house that my grandfather built get washed away, so I know the threat is real, but art speaks to me in a way that other things don't," said Laura Baker, a Portland nurse who came to the walk after her shift ended. "It helps me find hope in the scary." The part-science, part-art event by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute was organized by community science fellow Evan Paris to help people explore their emotional response to climate change while publicizing the difficulty of documenting the effects of climate change that no one can see. "We are at the peak of the spring high-water season, but all the flooding is happening very late, when no one is awake to observe it or collect data about it," Paris said. "People need to know it's still happening. I thought this would shine a light on midnight flooding in a really powerful way." The performance artists in Judith Greene Janse's piece, "Everything Has Changed," channeled a family struggling to cook, clean and stay dry as the rising sea water overtakes their metal frame home in high water pooling near Luke's Lobster on Portland Pier just before midnight on Tuesday. "It is impossible to not be aware at some level that the environment that we always taken for granted is no longer granted to us nor or descendants, but yet we carry on," Greene Janse, a painter, wrote in her artist statement about the piece. "Everything has changed and nothing has changed." Imposing steel-frame kelp structures by Portland sculptor Ian Ellis line a water-logged guard rail on Widgery Wharf. Just before 1 a.m., the spring tide is still rising. By morning, Ellis' sculptures will be gone, but real seaweed carried in by the flood waters will remain on the lower parking lot. "This is a way to draw attention to the rising sea levels that we are all facing and a way to engage with the local community and get people interested in taking action," Ellis said. "What action? I guess it depends on the person. Protect the shore, protect ourselves, stop making things worse." BEING THERE Two dancers wearing fabric seaweed costumes made out of frayed abandoned fishing rope danced at the water's edge at Portland Pier, Widgery Wharf and GMRI's own oft-flooded backyard. Wooden sculptures of fishermen, fish and flowers were installed in the flood-prone places, photographed, then taken down. "As a citizen scientist, you have to be there when it's flooding to collect the data," Paris told members of the after-hours climate art walk. "Like these flood waters, this art is only up for tonight. Sometimes, you just have to be there, whether it's to do the science or do the art." GMRI operates a coastal flooding project that teaches non-scientists how to collect weather and water conditions during king tides and storms to identify local high-risk flooding areas, guide policy decisions and build community resilience, said program manager Gayle Bowness. People are more likely to take action when they witness climate change happening, Bowness said. The 2024 winter storms were a wake-up call for many Mainers, she said. Storms like those will only get worse due as our seas rise, she said, expanding due to rising temperatures and melting sea ice. While this art walk had a hyper-local focus, sea level rise haunts most of the Maine coast, which is why GMRI trains people to collect local flooding data throughout the state's coastal communities. Maine sea levels are projected to rise between 1.1 and 3.2 feet by 2050 and 3 and 9.3 feet by 2100. Gulf of Maine sea levels are projected to rise faster than the global average because it is susceptible to changes in the Gulf Stream and seasonal wind patterns, according to the Island Institute, a Rockland-based nonprofit advocacy and research group that serves Maine's coastal and island communities. ------ Portland exhibit, presentation will explore climate change through art The Union of Maine Visual Artists is presenting "Washed Away," an exhibition of work by 60 artists exploring personal and environmental transformation in a time of rapid change. This exhibit will be on view at the Portland Public Library between 5:30-7 p.m. until June 21. In connection with the exhibit, Gayle Bowness and Evan Paris from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute will be at the library on June 12 at 5:30 p.m. to lead a presentation titled "Coastal Flooding: Understanding Local Impacts through Science and Art." They will discuss the science behind sea level rise, projections for Maine, and the local impacts of tidal and storm-related flooding. This event is free and open to the public. Copy the Story Link
