Students take deep dive into Maine scallop education

STONINGTON, Maine (WABI) - “Our vision is to sustain and protect a fishing future for coastal communities in Maine.”

Explained Dr. Carla Guenther, Chief Scientist at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries,

Maine coastal organizations, universities, and high school students are working together to help sustain the state’s fishing industry.

Folks at the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership, Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, Colby College, Bates College, and high school students from Vinalhaven are working with fishermen and farmers to understand the Atlantic sea scallop larval supply along the coast of Maine.

“We created a kind of a vision and a future for management of the wild capture fishery for scallops. And we are now, 13 years later, going through rotations, but part of that initial process, all the fishermen identified that they wanted to know where the scallop larvae, where the scallop spat originated and how things were connected along the coast,” said Guenther.

Juvenie scallops, or “spat,” are not naturally contained.

These research efforts are to help fishermen and scallop growers identify productive survey areas and compare wild to farmed scallops.

Vinalhaven high school students made their way to the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries in Stonington to sort specimens that have been collected over the months.

“We put these bags out at the end of September beginning of October last year, and they sat out there. This set of bags was just brought in on Tuesday. And so, the kids are out there, they’re getting wet, they’re swishing the Netron. They’re picking all the baby scallops off of the bags and then Netron, and then we sit them out and we quantify them. And it really is like gold panning.” said UMaine Ph.D. Candidate, Phoebe Jekielek.

These Vinalhaven students are part of the Eastern Maine Skippers Program and enjoy getting to engage in hands-on activities like this.

“I definitely feel like they should expand the Skippers program because there’s so many people on the island out here that don’t know much about the industry. So, you know, it’s been good to, you know, just get a lot more information and learn the, you know, the details of it. It’s been interesting because, you know, I’ve lived on my entire life, and we live in a lobster community. So, it’s been very interesting to learn about that stuff and how the industry functions, and the about challenges that it’s facing,” said Vinylhaven High School Junior, Izaac Heppe.

Copyright 2024 WABI. All rights reserved.