Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership Partners with Center for Maine Contemporary Art and Rock City Cafe

Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership recently ran an Art and Marine Science program for high school students on Hurricane Island. This summer program is designed for students who are passionate about ocean ecosystems and interested in gaining skills and practice in scientific communication through the use of visual art. Throughout the week, student participants dove into marine ecosystems and honed their observational skills to create beautiful, communicative, and impactful artwork. They explored the invertebrates inhabiting the seaweed covered intertidal zone on Hurricane Island, the planktonic communities of the Gulf of Maine, and took a deep dive into the recreational and commercial uses of marine resources, including lobstering and the growing aquaculture industry. In collaboration with Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) and Rock City Cafe this year, the students artwork is displayed for public viewing in Rock City Cafe in Rockland. 

Each year, students in the Hurricane Island Art and Marine Science program create multiple individual art pieces including scientific illustrations, cyanotype prints, scallop structures, and many others. The students also work collaboratively to create one large piece of art to portray a certain ocean issue or topic. The art focuses on the growing aquaculture industry in Maine (specifically scallop aquaculture, one of the focuses of Hurricane Island’s research) and how it relates and interacts with vital fisheries, highlighting the potential for industry diversification to support more resilient coastal communities.

Center for Maine Contemporary Art is dedicated to advancing contemporary art in Maine through direct engagement with artists and the public, creating exceptional exhibitions and education programs that communicate the transformative power of the art of our time. CMCA’s Education department partners with Rock City Cafe to exhibit works that support the next generation of contemporaries.

Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership maintains an experimental aquaculture lease site in Penobscot Bay to focus work on aquaculture research and education for all ages. The work accomplished in using this lease provides those involved with unique opportunities to engage in aquaculture research projects, explore aquaculture professionally, and establish themselves as a part of the valuable waterfront communities of Maine. Hurricane Island’s experimental research lease is on a 3.2-acre aquaculture farm on the south waters of the Island and is conducting research on the emerging industry of farmed sea scallops.

This summer was filled with aquaculture on Hurricane Island. The organization hosted three total aquaculture workshops open and accessible to the public, with an additional workshop to come in fall, inviting individuals to experience aquaculture firsthand and visit the farm site off of Hurricane Island themselves. These free one-day workshops allowed participants to dive into aquaculture growing methods, spat collection for sea scallops, and more. Attendees came from a wide range of backgrounds–from professional oyster farmers to professors to individuals who had no previous knowledge of aquaculture or marine biology. These workshops exist to increase accessibility to and knowledge of the field of aquaculture and scientific research, furthering Hurricane Island’s mission.

For ten weeks over the summer, Hurricane Island was additionally particularly delighted to host two AquEOUS Fellows, Savara Shrivastava from the College of William and Mary, and Noah Schiller from Pitzer College, in collaboration with the Aquaculture Research Institute at the University of Maine. The AquEOUS Fellowship is an immersive program for undergraduate students interested in gaining hands-on experience in aquaculture. It focuses on building skills required for successful careers in aquaculture, fisheries, natural resource management, and marine extension work. 

During their Fellowship on Hurricane Island, Noah and Savara helped with aquaculture farm labor on the site, engaged visitors and students in aquaculture-related research programming, and assisted local researchers with long-term ecological monitoring data collection and analysis. At the culmination of the program, Noah and Savara had the opportunity to work with Hurricane Island research staff to design their own research project, collect and analyze data, and transform these visuals into final presentations at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center AquEOUS Symposium on August 7th. 

The Hurricane Island Fellows’ presentations showcased the interdisciplinary nature of Hurricane Island’s approach to aquaculture. While Savara tested the efficacy of a novel biodegradable gear cover technology, developed by Ocean Farm Supply, designed specifically to reduce biofouling on aquaculture gear, Noah focused on refining methods of integrating scallop aquaculture practices into Hurricane Island educational programming—one of the focuses of the organization. Both Fellows went above and beyond with their projects; Noah created an interactive map, accessible via a QR code on his presentation, displaying coordinates where Hurricane Island educational programs have collected juvenile scallop larvae since 2013. These larvae, explained on Noah’s poster, are then counted, measured, sorted, and incorporated into our experimental aquaculture farm. Savara programmed statistical tests comparing biofouling communities on two different aquaculture sites: Hurricane Island’s experimental aquaculture site and a standard lease, Pen Bay Farmed Scallops, in Stonington, ME. 

In addition to working with adults and college aged students, Hurricane Island emphasizes aquaculture-based education opportunities for high school aged students and younger. One opportunity for younger students this summer was a high school program focused on aquaculture and fisheries that allowed students to obtain a level two youth micro-credential in aquaculture from the University of Maine upon completion. The weeklong program focused on education surrounding water quality, biology, animal husbandry, aquaculture systems, and economically important fishers in the Gulf of Maine.

While many students partake individually in Hurricane Island’s programming, the organization also partners with middle schools, high schools, and colleges directly. This year, Hurricane Island is thrilled to have obtained funding to host high school students from the Mid Coast School of Technology. This workforce development effort will focus on aquaculture systems as part of a marine technology class, allowing students to experience a sense of place in Penobscot Bay, become familiar with aquaculture lease operations, establish themselves as science and technology leaders, and jump start their lessons in the class for the remainder of the school year. 

East Boothbay, Maine - On an uncharacteristically beautiful mid-April Monday, applause erupted from a conference room inside the Graham Shimmield Residence Hall at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences. Inside, 13 educators from Vinalhaven and North Haven had just come to the conclusion of Phase I of a three-day Climate Education Professional Development Grant funded by the Maine Department of Education and delivered by Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership.

“This has been really helpful to work with Hurricane. There’s been time to connect with fellow educators and time for things that don’t really happen in our day to day - especially in a small school where you have so many different roles to take on.” said Amanda Labelle, North Haven Community School’s Arts & Enrichment Coordinator. 

Temptations of April break aside, the educators came together from their respective islands to collaborate on integrating hands-on, climate-focused, project-based learning into their classrooms. This opportunity not only strengthened the professional skills of island teachers, it allowed them to coalesce and build relationships to one another internally across departments as well as across islands. 

Bryan Feezor, Assistant Principal at the Vinalhaven School shared “There’s not a lot of people who face similar realities and know what it’s like to go from a 6 year old to High School to Middle School in just a morning.”

The program is called Teaching Resilience: Professional Development for Climate Curricula, and brings in a diverse range of teaching talents including science, statistics, the arts, and included humanities teachers such as North Haven Community School’s Fred Emerick - “We’ve got a project idea that’s in place and ready to begin and I have a model for continuing that beyond this project and a network who I knew but didn't have a relationship with before.”

Newly at the helm of the Education Team for Hurricane Island is Will Galloway - With over 30 years of experience as an educator, mediator, consultant, and most recently as the Head of School for Watershed in Camden, Maine. Galloway’s talent is bringing people together, and that talent has already been put to great use, and will continue as Hurricane Island anticipates the busiest year of programs yet. Whether it is bringing together families, schools, nonprofits, for-profits, students or community organizations, Will hopes to create opportunities for convergence. 

Will has a knack for understanding the nuances of leadership as well, “Leadership is the capacity to demonstrate fluid expertise. Which means knowing when to lead and knowing when to join. It’s not one or the other but knowing how to be a part of, and support a group and also knowing when a group looks to you for direction.” and as Hurricane Island continues to evolve and think about how to make change in the world, leadership matters, “It’s not a leadership that imposes but a leadership of supporting.” shared Galloway 

He has a track record of success in implementing community-wide sustainability initiatives in midcoast Maine and that track record stretches back to his time in the Peace Corps in Thailand. These successes only come from a sense of coming together in consensus and harmony  

“I see Hurricane Island as a really good opportunity to build on the convergence that happens on the island, both with the staff and the students. My hope is to see the sense of community we create here be fully realized when participants return home. I want to use this experience to help plant the seed of what is possible when engaging with one another and their environment”.

Galloway plans to bring a more explicit awareness to the community-building, leadership development aspect of Hurricane Island - something that many feel is necessary against the current backdrop of American and world politics. Concepts like social emotional learning and resiliency draw on moral growth, sense of self, and relationships, and these ideas are increasingly being quantified and prioritized in formal and experiential education alike.

“Through our work at Hurricane Island, our participants gain confidence and grow more vulnerable, they have the courage to engage with one another on a deeper level, and leave seeing one another differently.”

This approach to consider the relationships between individuals and groups, different perspectives, and how to support one another is key to reaching the consensus necessary to approach the politicized large-scale issues posed by climate change in coastal communities like Vinalhaven and North Haven. 

In Phase I of this program teachers workshopped with leaders in place-based education and found guidance around curricular design in climate specific content areas, with the ultimate goal of designing a learning project to be implemented in the remainder of the school year. These projects were timely, responsive and relevant to the major changes happening in Penobscot Bay and the Gulf of Maine at large

With an eye towards the fisheries, Vinalhaven science teacher Ruth Brooker, is looking at the lobster industry. In Vinalhaven, lobstering is an extremely visible and important part of the local economy and lobster boats dominate the harbor. “We’re focusing on lobster and sea temperature data” shared Brooker. A Georgia transplant in her first year at Vinalhaven School, she is becoming fully immersed in the ecology around her - just a week earlier she had students participating in marine field research with Hurricane Island, part of a NOAA-funded collaborative study on Maine scallops which includes Colby, Bates and Maine Center for Coastal Studies.

Break out sessions led by the Hurricane Island staff included year-round Hurricane Island Educator Claire Gabel, who is returning from the 2023 season. She took teachers on an ecology walk and with prompts of ‘what do you notice, what makes you wonder, and what does this remind you of?’; and Assistant Education Director Kyle Amergian led a foray into the intertidal zone and introduced the five E’s of teaching - Engage, Explain, Explore, Elaborate, and Evaluate.

North Haven Community School Project Coordinator Maddie Hallowell is also considering environmental impacts on her island - with a background in environmental monitoring and her experience with surveyors and drone use. Her idea is to collect “ consistent and regular measurements on coastal erosion around North Haven with students” with a component of outreach to seasonal and year round residents. “I have access to students of all ages, and I think students are interested in this especially after the storms this winter.” said Hallowell. 

It is important to consider the necessity for scientific literacy as well. Teacher presentations transitioned into goals and desired outcomes, this was evident as a Vinalhaven math teacher David McKechnie offered the collaborative services of his statistics class; “Many projects are going to be using data and my goal is to help the various projects in both islands use their numbers in the most efficient, careful, realistic and scientific ways possible. My superpower is my students … No exaggerations or assumptions allowed!”

Thinking about the projects goes hand in hand with considering the results; for Ruth Brooker on Vinalhaven “One of my successes would be students that are able to communicate understand past historical trends in temperatures in the Gulf of Maine and lobster populations and identifying a correlation for future comparison - we could start a community conversation about trends and have interviews with what folks see now”. 

Likewise for Maddie Hallowell and her coastal erosion project, “My success would be creating a data collection protocol sheet and making nice graphic pieces that community members could see, creating consistent data and perhaps a suggestion sheet for landowners on how to mitigate erosion. This could include planting native plants, landscape changes, or even things not to do.”.

The teachers will be supported by Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership, which has year round professional researchers and educators with time set aside for this collaboration. Local community organizations will play a role as well, partnerships have been identified with Vinalhaven Land Trust, North Haven Conservation Partners, The Climate Working Group and the Town of North Haven.

These projects are now entering Phase II, wherein the research projects will be organized and carried out and in Phase III these teachers will come together again on Hurricane Island in late summer to share their experiences implementing their community-based projects.

Assistant Education Director Kyle Amergian was ready to lean in with everything that Hurricane Island has to offer, “We’re excited for the next step in all of this and hope that you’ll utilize me. I’m ready to come help and put these plans into action.”. This offer of support includes access to Hurricane Island’s scientific and educational resources, which includes a fleet of vessels with scientific gear to deploy and take oceanographic measurements and samples. It also includes staff such as Amergian, who is the Assistant Director of the organization’s Education Department, as well as the Hurricane Island’s Science & Research team, led by Dr. Anya Hopple. 

Sitting just a few miles away from both Vinalhaven and North Haven, the staff and educators of Hurricane Island are equally familiar with the opportunities and challenges presented by the island landscape and local ecology. Hurricane Island’s Research and Education staff are no strangers to the classrooms and coastlines of either island and as such they are an ideal connector for this professional development opportunity. 

North Haven science teacher Sam Taggart summed up the overarching theme of the effort, “You’re trying to get people to think about and care about what is going on around them”. This motivation combined with a long overdue sense of creating inter-island relationships could be felt even by the end of the 3 days at Bigelow. Amanda Labelle, Arts & Enrichment Coordinator for North Haven shared that “finding our throughlines in these trainings will help us in the future because we will have established a process of collaborative practices with our disciplines and be able to feel like that’s something we can continue to do. We can use this as an opportunity to generate that continued collaboration in this hands-on interdisciplinary approach.”.
For more information about the Maine Department of Education Climate Education Professional Development Grants contact Teddy Lyman, Climate Education Specialist at the Maine DOE Office of Innovation at theodore.lyman@maine.gov

Training for Maine’s Marine Economy Future

Chloe Finger is a bonafide marine engineer. Borrowing from her growing up on the schooner J&E Riggin and her expertise from working last year on Hurricane Island’s Facilities team, this week she completed an oyster grader on island to efficiently sort the oysters that we grow on the Hurricane Island aquaculture farm. She’ll begin using this tool with Micah Conkling, her fellow Aquaculture Farm Assistant this season who brought oyster-farming and aquaculture-development research experience to the farm, but only after he finishes removing the encrusting organisms that foul the nets that we use to grow our scallops.

While Chloe and Micah’s tasks this season varied weekly—from boat handling to animal husbandry to SCUBA diving on our farm’s moorings—their duties for the season overlapped with the hands-on aquaculture curricula that we designed with the Hurricane Island Education team for this year’s two cohorts of high-school aquaculture workshop participants. In all, the skill-building Micah, Chloe, and our aquaculture students experienced is part of innovative occupational-development programming in vocational education: namely, that of “microcredentials.”

Microcredentials are certifications of proficiency awarded once a learner of any kind completes a training that an established institution recognizes as sufficiently rigorous. In our case, Hurricane Island has been building a curricular pathway with UMaine’s Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research (CCAR) and Aquaculture Research Institute (ARI) and other partners to teach the basics of saltwater aquaculture such that Chloe, Micah, or our high-school students may receive official, résumé-ready certifications of their skills without needing to enroll in a traditional school. As a college student completes credit hours in a classroom to show they know their stuff, so can a student learning maritime skills outside the classroom, as long as an education authority approves their learning path.

While they also award official certifications, microcredentialing programs are often much shorter than conventional college courses (weeks instead of months) because they are aimed at making skill-certification more broadly attainable. Says CCAR’s Melissa Malmsteadt, “microcredentials are kind of brilliant—you can get a baseline level of interest in a topic to see if it interests you without needing to commit to a four-year college.” Microcredentials differ for youth and adult learners, and microcredential development accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic as educators foresaw future impediments for traditional learning systems. However, professionalization programs for marine aquaculture are especially new because ocean-farming industries are still maturing in Maine and nation-wide (shout-out to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute’s 2020 strategy report on aquaculture workforce development in the state).

Thus are Hurricane Island’s adult and high-school aquaculture microcredentials still pilot programs while Chloe and Micah provide feedback on their skill-development, and as we field-test lesson plans to guide youth students through at least the first of three levels of ocean-farming proficiency. This season, however, we are proud that our youth participants completed Level 2 of UMaine’s youth Aquaculture Microcredential through our workshops; these students are on their way to receiving the first stage of UMaine’s adult Aquaculture Microcredential.

We are thoroughly excited to continue to integrate our marine research with Hurricane Island’s education initiatives. In the meanwhile, Chloe will fix the bilge pump on the skiff, and Micah will keep monitoring the saltwater aquarium he built to develop sugar kelp spores. Fortunately, they are comfortably accustomed to the range of competencies required for marine work.

By Essie Martin

You may have met Dr. Anya Hopple at our Field Research Station Opening, or perhaps you know her through her most recent work as a scientist at the Smithsonian Ecological Research Center, where she was leading an effort to understand the effects of extreme weather events on forest systems. Here is a link to her most recent publication exploring carbon fluxes in microbial systems as they respond to a changing climate. She brings with her a wealth of ecological, climate and collaborative knowledge and we are so excited that she’s finally here.

We are getting to know Anya through the lens of island work and living, which is generally a little muddier and a little saltier. Anya has joined us on island the last two weeks getting to know our systems and habits on the island while acquainting us with her own organization tools, which are helping us become even more efficient and focused on our research efforts. 

Anya has taken to island life with ease; she joins us with a smiling face for daily morning meetings, she offers solutions for the riddles and crosswords we puzzle out over breakfast, and has forged her own island routines. Anya is also acclimating to island research after dissecting a scallop perfectly on her third try, taking a turn behind the wheel of our skiff, and grappling our longline to collect scallops. She has transitioned into a directing role beautifully, challenging and questioning the way and the why of how we do things, creating new organizational setups, and encouraging us with high fives. 

Yesterday, after a long season of spawning attempts, our Lead Scientist Phoebe Jekielek convinced our scallops to spawn and we were able to deploy a trial fertilization experiment. Anya sprung to action and hopped on the boat to be our surface support for our SCUBA team! Anya tackled surface support with the same attitude she has joined the rest of island life– with enthusiasm, a method-minded brain, and a knack for anticipating the needs of those around her. 

We are delighted to have Anya as the newest member of our team, we can’t wait to see where her vivacity and zeal take us in the future! 

As a new member of the hurricane island crew, I had no way to picture, before coming to the island, how intertwined our lives would be with weather. Days of fog and sun have a great impact on not only the mood of the island, but also how much (and what kind of) work we can get done in a day. 

I often bemoan the fact that I have no way to predict rain, and harbor a certain envy for those in sync with the atmosphere. Without a trick knee, I am sorely reliant on my phone’s weather app. More than just predicting precipitation, I want to learn to read the sky. One of the things that has struck me most about this place are the clouds. On the island’s aquaculture site we have a clear view of clouds that catch over the Camden Hills and spill out into Penobscot Bay. They bloom in great stacks, long wisps, checkerboard expanses, or fluffy pillars with flat bottoms. 

Clouds in Maine play an important role in local folklore: Most people have heard the phrase “red sky at morning, sailors take warning, red sky at night, sailors delight.” A red sunrise results from dust particles of a storm system passing from the west (typically in the form of cirrus clouds), indicating that a storm system may be moving from the east, and rain is on its way. This phenomenon has been recognized for many centuries: in the Bible Jesus told a fisherman “When in evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: For the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering.” (Matthew XVI: 2-3,)

Another cloud formation attributed with predictive power on the Maine Coast is the mackerel sky– an expanse of dotted or waved clouds said to indicate a change in the weather. Propagation of high altitude atmospheric waves creates this pattern of clouds to represent the scales on a mackerel. While the fish itself is common, and generally only used as a bait fish, its zebra pattern has become infamous along the working waterfront for predicting changes in pressure systems. 

Fishermen are also quick to point out mare’s tails: high-altitude-cirrus clouds shaped like lackluster check marks. These are said to point to an approaching storm. Cirrus clouds trap warm air close to earth, hampering the cycling of warm and cool air currents, and creating a positive warming feedback loop. On the aquaculture site we often see these whisps pointing out thunderheads rising over the Camden hills. 

Sometimes, the island is stuck in a whole cloud bank as thick fog settles in. Our weather-dependent life on the island dictates indoor work during these times: splicing line, puttering around the lab, writing blog posts. I can’t say I have ever lived so much at the mercy of the atmosphere. So, with our lives so tangled in salt and weather, what meaning can we seek from the clouds? Where will storms settle in over our little island? Will mares tails mark days of fog and rain? Will I start to feel this place not in my joints, but in my bones? 

Cumulus clouds underneath cirrus

According to the Oxford University Press, these variations have been typically associated with differences in growth, survival and other characteristics. As far as shell color goes, most sources say it's often been associated with environmental effects, but in other circumstances have been said to be more genetically controlled (Winkler, 2001). With the Gulf of Maine slowly warming, I wonder if that will make an impact on the variance? A study published on the NOAA Fisheries website in March of this year has already found that juvenile growth is hindered due to ocean acidification and warming, but would that suck the color out of them, too?

However, because the effects of environmental stressors, genetics, and other characteristics impacting color and shell patterning vary depending on species, I wanted to share some other information I found on the scallop of northern Chile and southern Peru- the Peruvian scallop. In hatchery production of these scallops as juveniles, other characteristics relating to shell colorations have been observed. On many of the juveniles, researchers noticed a white marking appearing on the center of the upper valve (See photo to the right). Researchers were able to make a reasonable assumption that hereditary mechanisms control color patterns more than environmental conditions (Winkler, 2001).

So, a lot isn’t known about this question specifically towards our native Atlantic sea scallop, but some generalizations can be made based on what we know concerning the Peruvian sea scallop!

I hope you all found this information interesting!

Yours in scallops,

Olivia

Sources

F. M. Winkler, et al. “Inheritance of the General Shell Color in the Scallop Argopecten purpuratus (Bivalvia: Pectinidae).” Journal of Heredity, https://academic.oup.com/jhered/article/92/6/521/2187385. 

NOAA Fisheries (2023, March 1). New study finds ocean acidification and warming hinder juvenile atlantic sea scallop growth | NOAA Fisheries. NOAA. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/feature-story/new-study-finds-ocean-acidification-and-warming-hinder-juvenile-atlantic-sea-scallop

Pousse, Emilien, et al. “Juvenile Atlantic Sea Scallop, Placopecten Magellanicus, Energetic Response to Increased Carbon Dioxide and Temperature Changes.” PLOS Climate, journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pclm.0000142.

Perhaps you’ve heard of radioactive isotopes — the kind used to date dinosaur bones; but most people haven’t heard of stable isotopes. When I first signed up for a stable isotopes class in college, my dad made fun of me, saying I’d just put two big words together to sound impressive. So what are stable isotopes for all you curious minds in the audience? (Yes, even you, Dad.) 

Isotopes are any atom of an element with an atypical number of neutrons. For example, a normal carbon atom has 12 neutrons, and a carbon isotope has more or less neutrons than the normal 12. Some forms of isotopes are unstable– they will eventually return (“decay”) to the “normal” number of neutrons for their element. For our carbon example, an unstable form of carbon is carbon 14 (a carbon atom with 14 neutrons). Overtime those carbon 14 atoms will decay to carbon 12, and the ratio of carbon 14 to carbon 12 allows us to date artifacts. Other forms of isotopes are stable and can exist indefinitely in their state. Carbon 13 is a stable isotope form of carbon. 

Stable isotopes are used in geochemistry to detect source materials (such as food and water), recreate paleo climates, and even in forensics. The way we measure stable isotopes is by taking the ratio of normal atoms of an element to the corresponding target isotope. Depending on the situation we measure different elements. For the purposes of identifying differences between farmed and wild scallops, we chose to use organic isotopes: Nitrogen 15 and Carbon 13. Organic stable isotope analysis can help us differentiate energy fluxes from local primary production, nutrient gradients at depth, and general food sources. This information may help to inform shellfish closures, best farming practices, and possible impacts of ocean acidification and warming on scallop physiology.  Nitrogen isotopes may also indicate possible anthropogenic influence close to scallop growth due to signature isotopic composition of human waste and fertilizer. 

We plan to sample scallops for isotope analysis in the middle of each month from June-October (with an additional sample at the end of August during scallop spawning) from aquaculture nets, aquaculture cages, and adjacent wild beds. We will sample 5 female and 5 male scallops from each source. Thanks to our continued collaboration with Bates College, we will analyze scallop samples on the Bates campus using their Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometer (IRMS). 

Stay tuned for results soon!  

The sun shimmers across the water, creating a beautiful, iridescent dance through the waves that lap at the boat on the dock. A few laughing gulls fly overhead, proclaiming their excitement for a sunny day of crab-hunting.

That’s what we all wish this past week would have been like! Here on the island there seems to have been a consistent fog, and an occasional mist here and there. As I sit here on my computer, entering data from our sea scallop spat bags, I hear fog horns blaring in the distance from the lobstermen going to do their routine trap checks, rain or shine.

On Monday of last week, I had a nice change of scenery- taking off on the Vinalhaven Ferry to Rockland the night before, and then off in the morning to the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center in Walpole. It was a brief back-road drive to the center, and I passed through a few cute cities which I hadn’t visited yet. The weather was slightly gloomy, but the wildflowers clinging to one another in their roadside clusters warmed my heart a bit. 

Once I arrived at the center, I joined interns from the AquEOUS program at the University of Maine, along with the rest of my Aquaculture Research Institute Externs for an awesome day learning about strategic and inclusive science communication. Throughout the day, we had a few sessions where we were led through engaging scenarios, which were facilitated by Sunshine Menezes and Katharine McDuffie from the Metcalf Institute. Later we were joined by two stellar panelists, Bill Trotter of Bangor Daily News and John Bear Mitchell of the University of Maine. They both discussed with us their perspectives of storytelling, and I came to realize how unique it was that even though they may work in different professions, their goals and audiences differ but can also overlap.

The three concepts that Sunshine and Katharine both emphasized to us to use in our science communication was intentionality, reciprocity, and reflexivity- and encouraged us to reflect on which we could better use on a daily basis, and which we felt were our strengths. One of my biggest takeaways from this workshop was that science communication happens for all of us- in lots of different ways. Especially as someone in a role that encompasses both educational and research aspects, it’s especially important that I’m able to explain my research in a way that makes sense to everyone. 
Coming back to the island Tuesday afternoon, I fell right back into my favorite place like I had never left. Being on the mainland made me realize how much I craved the simplicity of my quaint cabin by the sea, where it almost always felt as though the waves rocked me to sleep every night, somehow, through the dirt. Upon my return, it was a computer day from what the weather said to me. I worked on my tunicate species ID sheet, which will be helpful for me during my research to ensure thorough data collection. 

Throughout the rest of my week, I entered my first few columns of data into my tunicate-specific spat bag data sheet, enabling me to keep every number I could possibly need in one place. I’ve also been working on a fun blog post that’ll be coming sometime soon about the color variation on the shells of our baby scallops. It was an only natural question that popped into my mind after completing many-a-bag of spat, haha. I also spent a significant amount of time out on the aquaculture site, continuing with our deep clean and also grabbing some spat bags to bring back to the island for our education team. 

Also…I’ve finalized my research question! I’ll be working to find differences in tunicate species richness in our spat bags from different areas in the bay, as well as different positions in the water column. Super exciting stuff! In my research so far, I’ve identified five tunicate species, three of which are invasive to northern waters. They compete with our native species for natural resources, and take up lots of space on the seafloor that is important to native settler species. Invasive tunicate species are of special concern for the Gulf of Maine as it slowly has been warming. These little guys are broadcast spawners- so the warmer the water, the more they’re inclined to reproduce (See sources one and two). I’m hoping that the results of my project will help the Hurricane Island community and greater Maine coast better understand tunicate populations and their impact on our native species. 

Talk soon,

Olivia

(P.S., let me know in the comments if you have any questions about scallops, research on Hurricane, tunicates, or anything else!)

Sources: 

So you want to know: The terrible trouble with tunicates – Maine lobstermen’s community alliance. (2013, February 7). https://mlcalliance.org/2013/02/07/so-you-want-to-know-the-terrible-trouble-with-tunicates/

NY Sea Grant | NYSG: Research News—Invasive species a worry for scallop fisheries. (2017, September 7) https://seagrant.sunysb.edu/articles/t/invasive-species-a-worry-for-scallop-fisheries-aquatic-invasive-species-research-news

Hey everybody! My name is Olivia Trahan, and I’m the 2023 research intern! I’m here for the summer season all the way from Raleigh, North Carolina. Fun fact - I’ve never been up North, so I took a big jump coming all the way up to Maine! I’ve loved my time here so far and I’ve already had so many wonderful experiences, both on and off the island.

Back home, I go to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington where I’m majoring in Environmental Science with a concentration in Conservation, and have two minors- one in Digital Art, the other in Coastal and Environmental Writing.

My journey to Hurricane started when I flew into the Knox County Regional Airport on Saturday, June 3rd and then hopped right over to the island the next day. Starting June 5th, the entire staff came on island and we had staff training for a week. Big thanks to our galley staff for keeping us well-fed.

Earlier in June the research team was finally able to get into the swing of things as the island filled with the hustle and bustle that comes with having our awesome school groups. I had a full first day of work! I got to do some knot tying and boat driving practice with Fern, one of our captains. It was my first time learning to drive a boat and it was so much fun. I do have to admit, I was kinda nervous learning how to navigate and understand how boats reverse, as well as how to idle and switch gears. After that, I then went out with Phoebe, Chloe, Esther and Lucy on the skiff to the aquaculture farm to do some much needed cleaning. We took a few cages out of the water, and spent a while sexing and sorting scallops- most of which were for Esther’s stable isotope project (more on that in the next blog)! We deployed some cages that we had re-filled with scallops, and then I accidentally dropped one off of the float at the farm… good thing we’ve got a grappling hook. We’ve been having a lot of fun getting to know each other during our hours spent cleaning on the farm.

I’ve also started brainstorming my summer research project that I would like to complete this season. Since I’m employed by the University of Maine’s Aquaculture Research Institute, I’ll get to travel off-island in August to participate in the Student Research Symposium, held on campus, where I’ll present the findings of my project. Phoebe and I have brainstormed some potential research ideas and questions, and I’m particularly interested in why there’s such a high number of encrusting and stocked tunicate species that settle on our spat bags. From every lantern net filled with spat bags, I’m processing the top and bottom bags- so there’s some super exciting factors there that could be used for comparison. For example, is there a difference in tunicate numbers in the bags closer to the top of the water column, or the bottom?

Either way, it’s gonna be really hard to choose something that isn’t too niche of a research question, and will bring tangible results while also not having a research question that would be too broad and have too many factors that need to be assessed. Either way, I’m very excited about having a project that will be all my own hard work!

Enjoy the photos from the week of cool and funny things we’ve been up to. I plan to make our research blogs a weekly thing, so these will be up as regularly as we can manage. Have a great rest of your week, y’all!

By Essie Martin

As we get into the 2023 season, we are looking forward to getting back in the chilly Maine waters!

Earlier this season we had our second (my first) dive of the season to collect wild scallops in our mooring field. During the summer season the research team spends several days a week SCUBA diving in Penobscot Bay. We do everything from population surveys, to wild scallop collections, to setting up gear on our aquaculture site.

Needless to say, diving is a big part of our jobs, and for me it is a major highlight of working with Hurricane Island. Many people have asked me what we see on the bottom in Penobscot Bay since most underwater media portrays colorful coral scenes with clear crystal blue waters.

While this is not exactly our reality, we are still privy to the kind of beauty only seen underwater.  This time of year is especially beautiful – the clear cold waters make all the life we see seem so purposeful. Kelps and irish moss are stunning shades of pink and orange while the shells of tiny hermit crabs are bright white. On almost all our dives we see lobsters that scuttle and hide under whatever they can find: rocks, abandoned traps, pieces of kelp.

We often see big jonah crabs burrowing into the mud to hide with just their eyes poking out. On our shallow dives when we survey for kelp, we see more fish than on our deeper scallop collection dives. Sometimes we’ll see schools of pollock in the distance, but often it's the smaller cunner we get to see up close in the kelp. When we are lucky, we’ve seen small bright lumpfish tucked between blades of kelp on ledges, or along a mooring line.

On my first dive off Hurricane Island, Phoebe and I saw a giant sea robin, lethargic in a hole just off our main pier. On sandy dives we see flounder, some the length of my pinky, some as big as my forearm, rushing off from place to place just above the sea floor. 

One of my favorite locations to dive is in Gaston Cove on the south end of the island. The sea floor there is completely covered in sand dollars and pastel colored seaweeds that sway with the water. As you get deeper away from the island there are ledges dotted with scallops on the sea floor around them. 

Welcome back to another Hurricane Island season with the research team! We are grateful this year to not only be returning to the familiarity of the island, but also the familiarity of our team which, with the exception of our intern joining in June, is made up entirely of returners. Our team arrives on the island this week after nearly six months of off island work and adventure. 

We are lucky to have continued collaboration with Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, Bates College, and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) through our spat (baby scallops) project. This project has expanded spat collection to the entire Maine coast in an effort to understand their distribution and further develop scallop aquaculture (read Phoebe’s blog from the Fall here). Since then we’ve collected the first round of spat bags we deployed in the Fall. Our team, with other project partners, Bates students, fishermen, aquaculturists and other volunteers spent long cold days in January and February sorting spat from other critters that had settled on our bags, estimating numbers of spat collected, and collecting samples for later genetic analysis.  Many hands helped along the way– a big thanks to all that did! Our spat project continues as we head out over the next 4 weeks to collect bags deployed over the winter for spring sorting. I am looking forward to joining the fray and saying hello to the newest generation of scallops. 

Lucy and I successfully completed our advanced open water and rescue diver certifications in Key West in January. Thanks to the generosity of my uncle and aunt who live in Key West, Lucy and I were able to dive in warm water for the first time ever. The amount of color and biodiversity was a shock to our systems that had already settled into the monotone of winter in Maine. We are grateful that Hurricane Island was able to support these certifications which will ensure safety of future dives. While I can’t speak for Lucy, I am certainly ready to hop back in chilly Maine water, and say hello to the scallops. 

While my fellow research team tackled spat in Maine, I had the opportunity to travel to Africa for two months and visit family friends. Said family friends are big game veterinarians in South Africa, and I spent my time there on jobs catching and treating big game… needless to say it was not a boring trip. We traveled to Botswana where I spent an exciting afternoon lost in the bush, to South Africa where I sat on a live giraffe, and to Mozambique where I helped with cyclone repairs. My time there was filled with the staccato of never ending new experiences and automobile repair, and I am grateful for the tenacity I learned while away. 

This season we are looking forward to several Aquaculture Workshops and our Aquaculture Skills Sessions. The workshops are geared toward engaging the general public, K-12 teachers and researchers and offer an opportunity to join the research team for a day to learn about our 3.2 acre experimental aquaculture lease, aquaculture curriculum development, and research-based opportunities within aquaculture. The Skills Sessions are more focused on engaging new or current farmers and highlight development of the specific skills and knowledge needed on the farm. We are grateful for our Aquaculture Manager Madison Maier, who is the main organizer behind these events and worked hard off island to make them possible with funding from SEA Maine’s Marine Living Resources Economy Capacity Building Grants. 

We are excited to get back into the swing of things with on island research, and look forward to seeing new and old visitors to the island. 

We are lucky to be on Hurricane Island. We are lucky to be in Penobscot Bay.

We are lucky to be in Maine.

We’re lucky for many reasons, but one of my favorite reasons is all of the opportunities we have for collaboration with local aquaculturists, fishermen, resource managers and other organizations to answer locally-relevant questions. For example, we recently partnered with Dr. Carla Guenther from the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries and Dr. Caitlin Cleaver from Bates College to apply for funding to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC). And guess what, we got the funding! 

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is an interstate initiative that unites states along the eastern seaboard in the joint effort and shared vision to realize a sustainable and cooperatively managed fishery. Since the 1940s the Commission has served to coordinate the promotion and protection of the fishery through collaboratively overseen conservation and management practices, including through the disbursement of highly competitive grants.

Many of you are familiar with the spat collections efforts we’ve been doing around Muscle Ridge and Hurricane Island for a number of years (check out previous Research Intern Hallie Arno’s blog here). Our project is titled “Toward resolving wild sea scallop (P. magellanicus) larval spatial and temporal distribution along the Maine coast in support of developing scallop aquaculture.” The funds awarded by ASMFC support a community-based collaborative project that engages fishermen and farmers in a pilot investigation to determine patterns of larval abundance and distribution along the Maine coast.

The initiative has the goals of:

• Evaluating the variability in scallop larval supply

• Developing a low cost monitoring and data management system

• Strengthening relationships between fishermen and farmers as they team up to understand a resource upon which they both depend

• Providing authentic education experiences for high school and undergraduate students

• Determining patterns of larval abundance and distribution requires expertise from fishermen and farmers, oceanographers, marine ecologists and resource managers. 

We worked with local scallop growers and fishermen to identify sites to deploy our spat lines in Casco, Muscongus, Jericho, and Narraguagus Bays. Each transect has ten lines deployed and each line line has 10 bags on it and a temperature logger, two lines in each transect have salinity loggers. Most of the lines were built on Hurricane Island by the Research Team and handed off to the fishermen who deployed them from their boats. All of our lines were deployed by October 1 and we’ll be retrieving this first set of lines at the end of January while deploying a whole new set to be retrieved in April. This will give us an idea of the seasonal variability of spat supply along the coast. When we retrieve them, we’ll have around 400 bags to sort through! But don’t worry, we’re working with the Eastern Maine Skippers Program and other local schools to help us sort the bags, count the baby scallops, and identify other species that settle in the bags.  

This has truly been a collaborative effort that has required communication, coordination, and lots of logistics along the entire coast. The efforts of the fishermen, farmers, researchers and managers who have been involved illustrate the commitment to a cooperative approach to research, one that integrates knowledge from all of these stakeholders with a common goal of supporting our scallop industries. Stay tuned as we approach our first spat line retrieval…there will be a lot of scallops to sort!

Last year, I was part of the UPG Sustainability Leadership Program, there were nine weeks of digital training with more than 500 young people from several countries. At the end of the training, 60 young people were selected to have an experience at Hurricane Island.

I had the honor to be selected and voyage to Hurricane this summer and I would like to share some insights I had:

1. Be Kind

People around the world have been working hard to do their best. Each country, each culture, and each person is peculiar. Being kind to ourselves to be kind to others. I realized that what we need to be to others is the same we need to be with us. If you want to be more patient with others, start with yourself. Many times, we reflect our own needs on others. 

2. Honor our history

If we respect people that came before us, we will honor the journey they had to do for us to be here. Therefore, we should think about everything that some people needed to face for us to be here today. Honor is a way of respect. If we respect our past, we can build a better future, with peace, values, and consideration for the environment.

3. Think about climate change

Thinking about "climate change" is not only the responsibility of people and companies that work with environmental topics. It is a responsibility for all of us. Climate change has been transforming our environment, our economy, our business, and our life. In Hurricane Island I realized that: to honor our past, we need to think about climate change. We need to talk about this. We need to act, each one in their context, we need to act.

4. Be open

In some times, building a network looks like a professional thing. However, this is not true. Being open to meeting people, talking about everything, and learning something different is a way to expand our minds and become better human beings.

Sometimes, I would like that the people who came before me could have the same opportunity to be at Hurricane Island and learn about all of this. Therefore, I realized that being there, was a way to honor these people. If I could give some advice, I would tell you to enjoy each minute of your journey.

Learn more about United People Global and how to apply to this amazing and unique partnership program with Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership

Louize Oliveira is a Project Manager and UPG Sustainability Leader based in São Paulo Brazil. Louize is Co-founder of SafePlace, a social digital platform with the purpose to promote gender equality in the work environment, in alignment with the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 - Gender Equality, of UN 2030 Agenda.

Throughout the summer weeks you will find our educational programs on our main pier. Front and center, students, educators and researchers are sorting through muck, squishy tunicates, skeleton shrimp, and piles of clams. The goal is to find juvenile scallops in these green and blue mesh bags, called spat bags. 

Research Assistant Sam Poratti and (then) Research Intern Lucy Williams sorting spat on Hurricane in 2021

Every year in September, our research team sets out spat bag lines at twelve locations surrounding Hurricane and the Muscle Ridge. Last year, our Director of Education, John Van Dis, set out some additional educational spat bags with Belfast and Oceanside schools in October. These lines are usually retrieved in the late spring and organized on our aquaculture site. Our spat bag research is an undertaking that takes the entire summer for students, participants, the occasional island visitor, and the research team to sort through. While collecting the juvenile scallops, we count the precise amount of living scallops, measure a percentage of them, and account for other species present in the bags such as tunicates, sea stars, and mussels.

However, for commercial scallop farms like Pen Bay Scallops, the process is much faster and does not include precise counting, measuring, and biodiversity analysis like we do on Hurricane. Commercial farmers are usually most interested in the amount of scallops collected year to year wherever they set their bags. With dual commercial and research applications, spat bags are a great teaching tool for introducing students and interested growers to scallop aquaculture and the unique qualities of the animal that make farming different (and maybe a little more complex) from other bivalves.

On May 16th, Pen Bay Scallops farmers Marsden and Bob Brewer hosted the Eastern Maine Skippers Program, a high school collaboration with Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries,  as well as a few interested farmers for sorting their spat bags with the help of the Hurricane Island Research team. We were able to boat over from Rockland to Stonington in the morning fog in our new vessel, Sunny. On the Stonington public dock, three groups sorted through ten bags received by the Brewers from the approximate 200 they set out each year. Madison Maier, Aquaculture Manager on Hurricane, devised a scheme for estimating the total amount of scallops per bag. For perspective, our first few bags this season have had 170, 243, and even 434 scallops per bag. Pen Bay Scallop’s spat bags averaged 4,038 per bag! 

Logan Leach (left) and Emery Leach (right) sort through the netron mesh from one of the Brewer’s spat bags and the juvenile scallops fall into the barrel to be measured  (right image). 

To get this estimate, students collected 10 mL of scallops by scooping up from the piles of scallops that came out of every bag or by individually picking them up. Once they had 10 mL, they counted the total number of scallops that filled that 10 mL volume. Three measurements were made for each bag and the average number of scallops in 10 mL was calculated. Then, the total volume of scallops for each bag was measured using 1000 mL graduated cylinders. Once the total volume of scallops was obtained, the students simply multiplied the number of scallops in 10 mL by the number it would take to get to the total volume.

The total scallops in each bag ranged from 1700 scallops to 7160 scallops. The total scallops collected in all 10 bags was estimated to be 40,380! That is a lot of little scallops! Marsden and Bob, with the help of the students, sorted the juvenile scallops by size and then put them in appropriate gear for them to grow up on their commercial aquaculture lease near Crotch Island. 

The past few years have been years full of seclusion for everyone, including the scientific community. Meetings, conferences, and workshops were all moved to Zoom in order to keep us all safe as the pandemic unfolded. But now, the scientific community is also starting to “open up” with in-person events and the re-introduction to networking, sharing ideas, and debating research…it’s kind of anxiety-inducing and awkward and exhilarating all at once. The Hurricane Research Team got to participate in this re-introduction last week at the Benthic Ecology Meeting (BEM) in Portsmouth, NH. 

The BEM is put on by the Benthic Meeting Ecology Society (BEMS), a non-profit organization established to run a yearly meeting to exchange scientific information focusing on marine benthic ecosystems (e.g., rocky intertidal, coral reef) and to foster the next generation of benthic biologists. Their mission is to promote research in benthic ecosystems, support the exchange of information about benthic ecology, and encourage student participation to develop the next generation of benthic ecologists. This year there was a lot of representation from Hurricane Island staff, both past and present!! 

Our current Lead Scientist (Phoebe, me), our Aquaculture Manager (Madison), and our Research Assistant (Lucy) all got to attend. I was totally overwhelmed by the number of talks that I wanted to attend and had to make some hard decisions! Sessions spanned climate change, aquaculture and fisheries, invasive species, new technology and many more. Lucy also led the charge to create an amazing poster with Madison highlighting our scallop reproduction work and presented it during the poster session on Thursday night. Presenting posters is a great way to network, exchange ideas, and practice communicating about the research we and our partners are undertaking.

There were also presentations given at the conference by Carl Huntsberger and Sophie Lisle, two past Hurricane staff!! Carl was our Research Assistant during 2020 and is now a Research Biologist at the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) in Rhode Island and leads the Sea Scallop Research Fleet effort and a project to assess fisheries species at the South Fork Wind Farm. He presented on lobster stock structure research with commercial harvesters. Sophie was an Education Intern on Hurricane last summer and is now a junior at Bowdoin College where she’s been working on evaluating microplastic consumption across trophic levels. Can’t wait to see what she does in her senior year and beyond. 

All in all it was really great to get back to a bit of in-person connection and information sharing. The conversations that arise when you’re getting your coffee or walking from your hotel to the conference might create new collaborations and generate new ideas in just a few minutes. This conference only stoked my fires about the work we’re doing on Hurricane, the role we’re playing to create sustainable solutions to the ecological, social, and economic challenges of a changing world, and how we can best mentor and prepare the next generation of scientists and change makers to face those challenges. Onward ever onward ☺

For more information on Lucy’s Research be sure to check out the recent blog posts and research pages on our website.

My day started at quarter of six, heading down to the boat shortly after dragging on clothes and pounding a cup of coffee (black, we were out of half and half). I have been filling in for John as relief captain this winter, keeping my sea time up and getting some experience handling single-screw downeast boats. John has given me the reins today; the responsibility of delivering his contractors to North Haven.Those aren’t the only passengers on this particular Wednesday, however. Three other staff from Hurricane Island are tagging along for the rare and important winter island checkup trip. 

We made the Breakwater by 0635 and steered a course north of the PB buoy, shooting to hit just south of the Monument on Fiddler’s Ledge, a well-known landmark for anyone who’s ever been through the Fox Island Thorofare. The temperature was probably in the single digits outside the cabin, but inside, with the big six cylinder Caterpillar making heat and the diesel drip heater going down forward, it was comfortable. The Equinox is about as good a winter lobster boat as you could ask for. She’s heavy, dry exhaust (easier to winterize in freezing temps), and has ample space below to stay out of the weather. Some small but critical features include a centrifugal clear-view window and heated windshields, which keeps your vision clear of freezing spray. 

We were inside the Thorofare by 0710 and out of the majority of the freezing spray. The sunlight was just starting to brighten up the skinny piece of water ahead that separates the islands of Vinalhaven and North Haven, and although cold, was another beautiful day to be on the water. I idled the blue 40’ Young Brothers past the mooring field, usually stuffed with summer boats, but today there were just a handful of islander’s lobster boats with low slung ice beards just above their waterlines, clinging to the spray rails. The contractors piled onto the dock and up the gangway, to hop in their frozen vehicles and head off to their respective jobs.

With the contractors offloaded, we headed casually back out the Thorofare with the sun at our backs, following the Vinalhaven coast on a familiar route to me. The trip takes us past the Sugar Loaves, around Brown’s Head Light, and past the gazebo on Crockett’s Point as we fall off to port, headed for Leadbetter’s Narrows. Coming through Leadbetter’s Narrows, looking up to the house and yard, and seeing the floats tucked away in the cove was just beautiful, still in the shadow of the morning. After the Narrows, your view opens up to the head of Hurricane Sound, and we swing almost due south for Hurricane. 

The band of snow melted off evenly by the tide on Leadbetter’s bold coast, and the dense spruces tipped with white was just beautiful as we cruised at an economical 9kts, which is just about hull speed for this boat. We snuck over into the lee of Crane Island as we proceeded south. There’s rumor that a rare Russian “Steller’s Sea Eagle,” is around, far out of its normal range of coastal Russia and occasionally western Alaska, so we keep a sharp eye out for any big-bodied raptors, including Snowy Owls. Nate had his big lens with him, so we were really hoping for some action.

With no bird sightings of significance, we ran the rest of the way down to Hurricane. Today’s tasks included an important mid-winter sea water sample and depth profile with a tethered Sonde muli-parameter measuring device that gets lowered at a steady rate collecting data from the surface to the bottom, resulting in a detailed data profile. We also used a Niskin bottle, which is a much more simple device, to capture water samples at specific depths. The Niskin sample is placed into a specially prepared brown plastic bottle to be frozen and later analyzed for environmental DNA, as part of an ongoing study. 

With the sampling out of the way, it was time to land alongside the pilings at the Main Pier and take a walk around to check the photovoltaic systems, buildings, and any unpredicted damages the winter weather has made. With the tide outgoing, and a little chop in the mooring field, I elected to let the gang off and idle around the south side of the island in the lee of Gaston’s Cove to wait in the sun for them to walk around and take pictures. With a big snow forecasted, Madison and Lucy took the rare opportunity to skate on the Quarry Pond. 

In an hour, they called me back to the pier and I eased the big boat alongside the ladder again. Everybody made it down the slippery rungs and safely back aboard, and I got a flurry of positive reports and pictures as we headed for home. Battery systems seemed to be holding on, and in general, everything was weathering the winter pretty well. It’s always amazing to me how resilient the island is. 

The following is a brief update regarding the tilt-current meter (TCM) deployment on the Hurricane Island aquaculture site this past summer and fall.

Find the first post here: https://www.hurricaneisland.net/island-updates/2021/9/15/tilt-current-meter-tcm 

Our goal with the TCM was to collect flow speed and direction data during a spawning event on our experimental aquaculture farm. Scallops broadcast spawn, meaning they send gametes (eggs and sperm) into the water for fertilization. There are many studies on what induces large-scale spawning events for scallops and these results can vary from location to location and year to year. Hurricane Island has been collecting data from our farm for three years regarding approximately when spawning occurs and possible environmental factors that induce spawning such as temperature and moon phase. Specifically, downwellings coinciding with temperature increases have been shown to correspond to spawning events for scallops (J. C. Bonardelli et a, 1996), but this hypothesis had not been tested on our site. So, we deployed our TCM on the customized anchor at the end of August until the end of October, a collection time chosen due to historical data about spawning events on our farm. 

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How do we know when scallops are spawning? We collected scallops from our aquaculture site to dissect and weigh them in order to calculate what is called gonadosomatic index (GSI), the ratio of wet gonadal mass to the total wet body mass without the shell. The GSI essentially tells us if the scallop's in our sample aquaculture population are "ripening" to spawn or if they have spawned already. What we are looking for is a steady increase followed by a sharp drop in average GSIs from these samples, indicating that a spawning event has occurred.

Figure 1b shows us a sharp drop in GSI in the beginning and middle of September, the weeks of September 1st through September 20th We assume that a spawning event occurred within that time frame. Figure 2 is the TCM data from the spawning weeks observed in the GSI data.

We see that we have a local maxima during the second week of September. In fact, this is the maximum speed collected during the entire deployment from August to October. This maximum flow speed occurs during the middle of what we expect to be a spawning event. Whether this peak flow speed influenced scallop spawning is still yet to be determined. In addition, temperature is still missing from this analysis at this time. Our next steps are to look at temperature data during this time period and compare to surrounding months as well as recreate this experiment next summer and compare results. 

            Early stage temperature analysis suggests that daily temperature at the site peaked at a similar time as the spawning event. See in figure 3. However, peak occurs at the beginning of September, but daily average temperature begins to cool off into the weeks we believe fall under our spawning timeline. Potentially, this temperature turn from warming to cooling, coinciding with a large temperature drop from one sample to another suggests that the temperature change is more indicative than maximum temperature. Further experimentation with temperature at depth will be needed this coming summer to identify possible temperature and flow downwellings. 

Works Cited

Bonardelli, J. C., et al. “Relation of Spawning of the Giant Scallop, Placopecten Magellanicus, to 

Temperature Fluctuations during Downwelling Events.” Marine Biology, vol. 124, no. 4, 1 

Feb. 1996, pp. 637–649., https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00351045. 

The Tilt Current Meter is produced by Lowell Instruments. More info can be found on their website

The last week of summer programming included the 2021 session of Women of Water, a long-running program designed by Director of Research, Phoebe Jekielek, specifically for high school girls and non-binary students interested in studying the ocean while practicing community building and leadership. Among the new faces arriving on Hurricane for the week-long course were three instructors, Kate Kyros, Kerry Whittaker, and Becca Turkewitz, former colleagues who had co-taught an interdisciplinary marine science, humanities, and leadership course at the former semester school, Coastal Studies for Girls. Kate, Kerry, and Becca were thrilled to join the island team for the week as leaders of Women of Water. Together, we all worked to create a space of learning, laughter, and self discovery while wading in the intertidal, collecting plankton, and taking in the sounds and sights of the island.

Each student was handed a fresh new journal on their first day here. The journals were intended to be used during sit spots and certain lessons, but students loved them so much they began to use them in between lessons and during free time. The students filled them with notes, poems, journal entrees, questions, drawings, and paintings. Their journals were a tool that turned into a keepsake, and I hope that they are able to look through them throughout the years to remember all of the rich experiences that they had on Hurricane Island. 

Throughout the week, students engaged in an arc of interdisciplinary science and leadership learning, moving from personal observation, to inquiry, to action and communication, building community. Along with hands-on field work in the intertidal zone, the group had the privilege to work with a wide range of ocean science and policy professionals beginning with Dana Wilfahrt and Rachel Miller of Rozalia Project who shared their love for the ocean and their work to spread awareness of ocean pollution and seek solutions to the ocean plastic problem.  Dana and Rachel also offered tools for students to find their ‘sweet spot’ of personal action to help the ocean, based on what the ocean needs, what they’re good at, and what they love to do.

On Tuesday, students were introduced to cutting edge ocean sampling technology through the FlowCam™, an instrument that combines fluid imaging technology and microscopic imagery to visualize and analyze diverse ocean plankton. FlowCam™ representatives Harry Nelson and Savannah Judge shared their time, passion, and expertise with the group. Midweek, the WoW students greeted six mentors who came to Hurricane Island for a ‘Hike and Lunch’ that led to authentic dialogue and conversations about marine-related career paths and how to harness one’s passions and interests to make change in the world. Mentor expertise ranged from ocean science, to natural history, community climate change resilience, environmental leadership, marine management, and conservation-based aquaculture. 

Humanities work led the students from analyzing birth and death records to reading sea poems by Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, E.E. Cummings and others. Reflecting the science themes of the week, the leadership activities and conversations guided the students through personal observation, inquiry of group dynamics, and assessment of actions and effective communication for understanding and addressing climate anxiety as resilient leaders in our complex world. 

  Ideas and questions were formed on slippery rocks in the tidepools. Articles and poems were read on warm granite, along soft mossy trails and everywhere in between. Snacks were eaten on sun baked ledges. By the time the last night on the island rolled around, the group had become a true community through sharing these experiences. A bonfire was lit, s’mores were toasted, and students watched meteors fall across the sky while giving each other friendship bracelets. 

When the Equinox pulled off the main pier with the Women of Water students aboard, there was a bittersweet feeling in the air. It was the end of another fruitful program week. It was also the end of summer programming. The Hurricane Island staff turned back to a quiet island that had been bustling with life just a moment ago. We had parted ways with a wonderful group of students, and now the time to part ways with a wonderful summer island crew was approaching. Each person that has stepped on this island this year has left positive memories that will live on with each and every one of us. Thank you, Hurricane Island.

Sam is currently pursuing his BS in Marine Science at the University of Maine School of Marine Sciences

During my ten weeks on Hurricane Island, and under the excellent direction of Phoebe Jekielek and Madison Maier, a lot of awesome science occurred! From flow meters and hydrodynamic models to gonadosomatic indices and Niskin bottles, there was never a shortage of research to be done. This doesn’t mean it was easy, though. The work our team did for the Maine eDNA program, as well as other aquaculture-related efforts, required a healthy amount of thought and preparation because of how fieldwork-heavy it was, and there were several important lessons to be learned from this.

Firstly, always plan for things to take longer than you think. An important way field work differs from lab work (which I am more accustomed to) is the flexibility required when planning excursions and samplings. There will always be something that extends the length of a trip or sample processing session, whether it be equipment malfunctions, in-situ decisions to perform additional sampling, or an exceedingly cute lumpfish that demands a photoshoot. Crucially, delays are nothing to worry about on the island! They happen constantly as a regular part of working in the field and especially around a working waterfront, so the best you can do is account for them when scheduling.

Secondly, preparation is an essential aspect of any successful field endeavor. When you’re out on a boat sampling water, you can’t just take a stroll back to the dock house or office to grab any supplies you may have forgotten. I can’t count the number of times I forgot some small step or piece of equipment and proceeded to hinder our research for the day in the form of additional boat trips or wasted time. A good remedy for this is checklists and cheat sheets that summarize what you need to bring on a trip and what you need to do with said equipment. Staging equipment near where they’ll need to be the day before a trip will also significantly increase your preparedness.

Thirdly, teamwork is required for nearly every aspect of science on a small island. Within an island community, everybody has a role to play, and nobody should try to ‘go it alone’ for most tasks. I am grateful for the level of support and teamwork presented by every member of Hurricane Island, and I understand that if each staff member did everything on their own, the island would be significantly less productive, and thoroughly less enjoyable.

Last but not least, a critical aspect of good field work is to enjoy your time outdoors! Especially in the case of Hurricane Island, you should always take time to appreciate the natural beauty that surrounds you in the field, and this will help you understand the true reasons why the research you’re performing is important to the earth. The natural world around us is a limited resource, and any time spent in its wonder should be appreciated in the moment.

In summation, performing field work on and around Hurricane Island this summer was an eye-opening experience for me, as I’m sure it will continue to be for other people for years to come.