With shellfish, let’s shuck fact from fiction
When the Fishermen's Alliance helped pull together a solid group of funders – public, private, and non-profit -- to save the Cape’s one and only shellfish hatchery in Dennis, some people wondered why we would bother. After all, shellfishing nearshore is a whole different reality from finfishing offshore. Why would a commercial fishing organization get involved? Was there some kind of ulterior motive? Is the Fishermen's Alliance trying to push for more aquaculture, drive out wild harvesters, change the historic local use of flats and shallows that for generations have helped families subsist?
Harbormaster profile: Dawson Farber, from Orleans to Dennis
Dawson Farber has been in and around Cape Cod waters his entire life. The Orleans native is heading into his fourth year as Dennis Harbormaster, after nearly two decades as Harbormaster and Natural Resources Director for Orleans. Farber’s headquarters is a small white building on the edge of the public marina at Sesuit Harbor, on Cape Cod Bay...
Not just one fish, two fish; managers look at ecosystem-based policies
Fishery managers on the West Coast were already being updated about what was happening in the broader ecosystem, not just fish stocks. Then something made those reports very much in demand: the Blob. The Blob, named after a 1950s horror movie creature, is a gargantuan swath of warm water created by climate shifts that caused a cascade of environmental horrors, devastating a $100-million cod fishery, decimating bird populations, killing whales and setting off toxic blooms...
All things shellfish
Hundreds of people packed into the Boston Park Plaza Hotel’s Grand Ballroom on a frigid morning in early January to learn more about aquaculture. There would have been several dozen more, but government scientists were missing, not allowed to attend because of the partial federal shutdown. The Northeast Aquaculture Conference and Exposition draws everyone from growers of shellfish, seaweed, and finfish to town constables, researchers, gear and seed suppliers, seafood wholesalers, and shellfish advocates...
When wharves were Provincetown’s runways
Wharves are all about one thing: Access. To the sea. To opportunities, resources and markets. On land highways and railroads created much of the same. But actually the closer analogy would be to airport runways, long and narrow jumping off points into a great beyond. No Cape Cod town built and used wharves more than Provincetown, in good part because no Cape Cod town had stronger need...
Alumni reunions: Cape experience colors Eric Brazer’s work in Gulf of Mexico
“I started as an intern on the Cape in the summer of 2004,” remembers Eric Brazer, Jr., now Deputy Director for the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders' Alliance. “I was in the same graduate program in environmental management at Duke University that Paul Parker and Mel Sanderson attended. Paul recruited me, and I loved it so much that I came back full-time in June 2005...
Fish for Families, food for thought
“Fish for Families” is one of our many collaborations that makes me proud to head up the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. Since 2013, partnering with the Harwich Food Pantry and other members of the Cape Cod Hunger Network, working with local fishermen and a packaging business in New Bedford, we’ve been able to offer just about 50,000 pounds of locally caught seafood to families in need...
The Farrells bring home several hundred thousand oysters for the winter
Wendy Farrell had spent the morning taking oysters off her grant in Orleans and was using a measuring ring to sort them on a big wooden table in her backyard -- while also talking a bit about real estate. “Most Cape Codders have three jobs right? The job you love, the job that pays the bills, and the job where you help your friends,” she says as she moves the larger oysters to their own bag...
Science Meets Shellfish
Dan Ward has gotten to know Cochlodinium polykrikoides really well. This species of harmful algal bloom began showing up at Ward’s Aquafarms in North Falmouth soon after it became operational in the summer of 2012. “It was around mid-August when I noticed the orange water color,” says Ward, describing the red tide that struck his grants. “The result was that any oyster less than an inch died, while any larger than an inch paused in their growth...
Interest in the Blue Economy burns red hot for students
A decade ago, Jon Hagenstein was doing what most young Cape Codders do – leaving. But after college, and some time away, he came back and opened his own business with two high school classmates. He has found they are not alone: When Hagenstein talks to bankers, other businesses and town officials, he discovers he is among a growing group, a new generation taking over existing businesses...
Crossing the bar in heroic and tragic moments
As of December, Coast Guard Station Chatham has become a “heavy weather station” instead of the “surf station” it has been since inauguration in 1872. According to the Coast Guard, this new heavy weather designation means Coast Guard crews can only set out if the surf on the Chatham bar is less than eight feet. If it is more than eight feet, rescue vessels can be launched from Stage Harbor and helicopters can be deployed from the Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod located in Sandwich...
