Coastal “resiliency” was the buzzword around presentations of new and ongoing research projects at the Maine Sea Grant Research Symposium. Project investigators discussed how their findings could be and have been applied to Maine’s coastal resiliency problems.
“We think that what resiliency means is helping people who live and work on our coast to understand their vulnerabilities related to climate change and other structures. And then once they understand those vulnerabilities we can help them with science to analyze that risk and turn that vulnerability into an opportunity,” said Paul Anderson, director and Marine Extension Team leader of the Maine Sea Grant College Program.
The biennial event was held Thursday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Buchanan Alumni House. The research projects presented at the symposium were funded in part by the federal Sea Grant program, which gives about $1 million dollars each year to the University of Maine for research regarding coastal issues.
Nine research projects were presented at the event, with five involving research that had been conducted over the past two years and four regarding research projects that just started in February.
“[The purpose] is to bring together people who have been sponsored by Sea Grant to conduct research, as well as some of they key stakeholders and partners who benefit from the research, and get them to come together and get an update on what’s been happening over the last two years,” Anderson said. “But also [to] talk about the new investments we’ve made and what we hope will happen in the next two years.”
Researchers who had already conducted their studies presented first in a panel format giving an overview of their Sea Grant project and presenting any primary findings.
Research Assistant Professor in the School of Marine Sciences Gayle Zydlewski discussed how her project “Fish distribution in relation to tidal hydropower in Downeast Maine” is helping the new tidal-power industry adapt to the environment it is entering.
“Our ultimate goal is to better understand what the environmental effects of these [tidal turbines] are, that everyone from fisherman, policy makers, the industry themselves and community members can live with in 15 to a hundred years from now,” Zydlewski said.
About half of the fish studied went by the device without coming in contact with it. However 99 percent of the fish were found to swim through the device. Zydlewski said that further research must be conducted to determine what happens to these fish that swim through the device.
The state of Maine’s fisheries was the topic of Richard Wahle’s presentation: “Maximizing the American Lobster Settlement Index Database.” Wahle’s project is centered on a monitoring system that tracks lobster settlement over a 25-year range.
“We built the monitoring program on the premise that if we keep our finger on the pulse of baby lobsters settling to these nursery habitats from year to year, we might have an early warning for down-turns or up-turns in the fishery,” said Wahle, a research partner with the University of Maine.
Other completed projects at the symposium were “The Seafood Links Project: Promoting sustainable seafood in Maine’s inland areas,” presented by Laura Lindenfeld; ”General circulation and exchange between isolated regions in Casco Bay,” presented by Brian Dzwonski; and “Spatial and temporal variation in the growth of the soft-shell clam along the coast of Maine,” presented by Will Ambrose.
The event ended with slideshow presentations outlining the upcoming research projects followed by a question-and-answer session.
The newer research projects presented were “Coastal flooding and erosion from severe storms in a changing climate,” presented by Qingping Zou; “Variation in habitat use of juvenile life stages of river herring,” presented by Karen Wilson; “Evaluating performance of length-structured models for assessment of northern and Atlantic herring in the Gulf of Maine,” presented by Yong Chen; and “Supporting sea vegetable aquaculture in Maine,” by Susan Brawley.
Federal funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association supports a system of 34 Sea Grant colleges across the nation.
“Maine is a relatively small Sea Grant program in the network and we get about $1 million per year from NOAA; we match that against other resources and run about a $1.8 million program per year,” Anderson said.
The event was followed by a seafood dinner reception and poster display summarizing the presented projects.