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IMEP #38
The Natural Nitrogen Carrying Capacity of Soils

Shellfish, Nitrogen and Habitat Quality –
A Cape Cod Experience 1981
The Truth about Nitrogen Part 2

Different View About Nitrogen Pollution and Shellfishing. Climate and Energy Habitat Discussions with John Hammond and Cape Cod Shell Fishers
(1981-1983)
Habitat Information For Fishers and Fishery Area Managers

Understanding Science Through History
(IMEP Habitat History Newsletters can be found indexed by date on The Blue Crab.Info™ website: Fishing, eeling and oystering thread) and Connecticut Fish Talk.com Salt Water Reports

Shellfish Restoration and Water Quality Project Shellfish Proposal EPA/DEP Habitat Restoration Initiative
Meeting November 18, 2009*
* The viewpoint expressed here does not represent the EPA-DEEP Long Island Sound Study. The views represented here reflect Tim Visel committee member – no consensus was obtained on the presence of Sapropel or black mayonnaise in Connecticut Long Island Sound Waters. At this time, the State of Connecticut DEEP has not officially made a position statement regarding Sapropel formation in high heat or the existence of Black Mayonnaise deposits that produce second source nitrogen compounds.


Tim Visel, Committee Member, HRI
The Sound School, New Haven, CT
The truth about nitrogen is a five part series that looks at three communities: Old Saybrook, Connecticut, Chatham, Massachusetts and Clinton, Connecticut, about nitrogen reduction by way of the local shell and finfisheries. It was part of the 2009 EPA-DEP Habitat Restoration Initiative (HRI) meeting to look at long-term climate and energy impacts of shellfish habitat restoration relating to water quality especially nitrogen. Project Shellfish, a monitoring and habitat classification study, was discussed at a November 18th, 2009 HRI meeting, but no consensus was reached regarding this proposal.

CAPE COD DISCUSSIONS

Early on in the Cape Cod Water quality discussions, attention was diverted from bacteria to nitrogen. I feel it was a direct result of seeing water clarity decline, however, warm water naturally contains more algae so on some resource assessments the water was green or brown in the summer of 1982. Colder water contains less algae so clarity in winter generally improves. One of the questions caused during this time was, “how was nitrogen removed from the land and in general soils?” Shellfishers had targeted the application of fertilizers, but these were seasonal (no one it seemed did winter applications, but snow was known as “the poor man’s fertilizer) and the Cape had also seen an end of open leaf burning. An oatmeal slurry now formed on those scarce rainy days which often directly lead to streams and brooks. The alewife runs on the cape were already feeling the effects of leaf falls ruining its “long runs” in streams that had low energy flows. In time these streams became filled with leaves as heat increased and “energy” with coastal storms subsided. As questions continued about nitrogen, concerns were raised about, “did we put too much fertilizers on these soils?”

For centuries densely populated regions along coastal nations had depended upon clean water from upland or mountain sources. The first organized U.S. water districts were established for public health when disease outbreaks decimated cities was linked to polluted surface water (primarily from sewage). Contaminated surface waters was used as rinsing, cooking and drinking water with horrifying results. A less visible source was contaminated ground water wells which acted to draw nearby contamination to the well itself. This would plague public health officials until it could be shown that wells could also become polluted with nitrate the source of the “Blue Baby” syndrome (1945) many from septic or cesspools. Health rules soon specified how far a septic system could be located from a well. Groundwater by pressure gradients could carry contaminants beyond a landowner’s lot lines, several hundred to several thousand feet. So, it was possible over time that a neighbor’s septic effluent nitrate could be drawn into another’s well. This is especially true if it was a high capacity well, continuous pumping could create a gradient for hundreds perhaps thousands of feet. The concept of discharging waste into the same water table for drinking had obvious conflicting “goals.” Some watersheds were deemed as meeting water quality guidelines (goals) actually were unsuitable; the primary reason was increased water demand. Around 1900, the U.S. population per person use of freshwater was 6 gallons/day. By 1975, it had more than tripled to 18 gallons/day. A recent CT Water Company billing statement now estimates the average family of four daily rate in excess of 400 gallons.

This happened as US households transitioned from the outdoor “privy” (outhouses) to indoor plumbing. Residential treatment system rapidly expanded to treat this new domestic water called “septic systems.” Often septic systems near wells contaminated them and new rules on seperation in Section 2657 of the 1930 State of Connecticut General Statues to 1948. “Attention is also directed to Regulation 103b of the State of Sanitary Code which reads as follows:’No privy, cesspool or other sewage disposal system shall hereafter be constructed within seventy-five feet of a well or within seventy-five feet of a human habitation other than the building served, without approval by the health officer.’ “

Industry residential and commercial users were all competing for what was becoming a precious natural resource.

In the background were potential land use changes and concerns about the “ruination of the Cape Cod residential/agricultural community” claimed by residents as more paved and commercially developed sensitive watersheds and fragile water tables. Sewage treatment plants were looked at for possible solutions, but the stress of eliminating all that fresh water by piping it into the sea upon the remaining and constantly “diminishing” freshwater aquifer was at the time, daunting.

Initially, elected officials thought they solved it with a plant concept in the 1950’s frame of reference of construction funding directed by the U.S. Public Health Service, then a division of the U.S. Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, treating it as a purely public health problem. The early sewage water treatment plants were not designed to be compatible with the ecological fish habitat or development issues. Public health not shellfish or finfish habitats were the driving force in getting them approved and built. Removing vast amounts of water from the aquifer by installing sewage treatment plants or designing residential systems to treat it became a divisive part of the public policy making process. Much of that involved removing coastal areas from the “drinking” aquifer zone of influence. Some of the sandy soils for geology alone and proximity to salt water could never support “drinkable” water uses. Many of the Dune cottages built on Cape Cod never had a water service other than roof barrels to catch rainwater, or extremely shallow pumps, one of which was made famous in Henry Beston’s book, The Outermost House; he simply drove a metal pipe below the cottage into the sand.

We finally came to the conclusion that for many areas, those closest to the shore ground water drinking classification just didn’t make sense. Even if it made bacterial standards at the time, we just couldn’t dismiss salt-water intrusion into the groundwater gradient. In other words, replacing the groundwater with freshwater (even septage) was better for the ecology than drawing the fresh water lens even lower. At least the soil and trees would have a chance to “take up” nitrogen. It could be that the coastal areas could never sustain heavy drinking well use again and that piped “city” water (even costly) might be a better solution on small lots close to the tidal/saltwater prism. Away from the coast where the groundwater/freshwater lens were deeper, it may be possible to separate them and treat the subsurface water and prevent or greatly minimize groundwater contamination. (The impact zone was determined to be roughly 1,000 feet.) Newer and engineered residential septic fields looked at maximizing evaporation. Questions now looked at the soils capacity to remove bacteria and nitrogen as natural filter systems.

At the same time efforts were to be made to reduce bacterial surface runoff and recharge the water table, and begin a public education program around water conservation. The Cape Cod area would be one of the first in the nation to install freshwater runoff recharge and retention basins for storm water along its roads, including the Mid-Cape Highway Route 6. At the same time bacteria and a growing Cape Cod domestic pet population also factored into bacterial spikes after heavy rains because shellfish areas were in these watersheds and with swans we took these spikes as non-human and attributed them to wildlife sources.

A major goal was to provide a different type of residential septic waste treatment, one that would increase the carrying capacity of the soils to treat waste. We came to that conclusion early in the spring of 1983, the old septic system and leaching fields would be designed differently to maximize the capacity of soils to treat wastes, especially on small lots.

That was seen to be more environmentally “responsive” than to build another waste water treatment plant or send additional sewage to the already over capacity Hyannis lagoon evaporation plant which was in an increasingly residential area and subject many felt to eventual groundwater issues. I remember an extension visit in which the backyard fronted some of the digestion ponds; on certain days the wind direction precluded outdoor activities, I felt bad for the family but there was nothing I could do.

It was noted that after heavy rains bacteria counts spiked (even during the rainfall) and it was suspected that to storm drain pet waste or wildlife were the primary sources – about 10 to 15 days later a second much smaller spike occurred and it was suspected that residential system “travel time” became evident as bacteria from them was “picked up in sampling.” We wanted more information on this smaller “second spike.”

WHAT THE SHELL FISHERS WERE SAYING

One of the reasons we tended toward improving onsite septic treatment was the area shell fishers were voicing their concerns at meetings in area towns. They claimed they were battling the fertilizer effect, the impact of “street sludge,” nutrients and excess fertilizer being washed into bays and coves, once productive shell fishing areas, but now full of mulch and dead grasses. They had been working the bay “bottoms” and felt they were now in the leaf raking and grass removal business, not the shellfish business. The first impacts they claimed was in the 1960’s and shortly after, some of the first “shellfish closures.” However, scalloping was allowed in waters with high bacteria counts (because only the muscle tissue was consumed not the digestion tract) and noticed something else that alarmed them. After a few years, bottoms that once supported oysters and clams for decades was now soft/muck covered. They used what was called “lookers” or scallop spotters, rectangular glass viewing boxes and in winter time, the traditional scalloping season noticed the habitat changes. The reports coming into the Cape Cod Extension office were almost identical (I guess today’s term would be “scripted”), the bottoms were different soft and muck covered – covered with dead grass and eelgrass that lived on sandy current swept bottoms was growing everywhere, but making the bottom more soft trapping silt.) Some of the hydraulic “pump” clammers had noticed the same thing, but added an important description. In some areas the bottoms now appeared to be completely dead. According to shellfishers, the bottoms had now turned “acid” or sour. Shells of clams were now soft and pitted, some crumbled as they were being dissolved in acid. The pH had they concluded, had dropped on these bay bottoms. They now acted more as composting habitats than finfish or shellfish habitats.

I had seen this before in my hometown in Madison in the 1970’s in a small tidal creek, called Tom’s Creek, but never thought a piece of land surrounded by ocean tides would be subject to the same eutrophication impacts. But an early “fish census” fyke net sampling in Green Pond was disappointing and resulted in some dead flounder that had “fin rot”, a bacterial wasting fin erosion problem associated with nutrient and bacterial enriched bottoms. The problems were here also. That was 1982, the same year the amount of fin rot containing flounder in some New Haven Harbor areas would soar to show a 40% prevalence in some areas. Something was happening to these habitats and arguments between shell fishermen wanting to remove excess or destroying grasses with residents who wanted to eliminate shell fishing because of environmental harm they felt was being done to the grasses. The shell fishermen in fact wanted to see the grasses go- they saw them as completely out of control and in fact, some of the best shell fishing years were those with little submerged vegetation.

These disagreements about waste water and shell fishing trickled into the local media and resulted in some contentious letters to the editor at the time, blaming each other. The Bourne Shell Fishermen’s group was taking an educational approach and holding public demonstrations to show people natural resource officers, shell fishermen and the public about the bottom soil cultivation, and the habitat “cleaning” aspects of hydraulic harvesting. They had even written up their report and mentioned the transition of good clean sandy/shell bottoms, to muddy or muck filled, those that emitted hydrogen sulfide smells where the “death and dying process was nearly complete.” Most of the concern was the fear that seed shellfish were dying in large numbers – some areas yielded no seed shellfish at all. Unfortunately, these practical demonstrations were poorly attended and often misunderstood. It’s difficult to describe aquacultural and benthic processes of bay bottoms standing in knee deep water with a lawn mower engine powering something that one attendee described as a hand held “car wash sprayer.” The education moment was lost, and several discouraged Cape Cod shell fishermen left Massachusetts for the Carolinas. They gave up on trying to restore those shellfish habitats they had watched become “foul” and smelled of sulfur.

IMPORTANCE OF IDENTIFYING NITROGEN SOURCES

If soon became apparent by the 1980’s eutrophication of small coves and estuaries on the Cape was occurring and was now becoming a serious regional problem. It also became known that some shell fishermen had experienced the habitat shift for decades, several back to the period immediately after World War II. Their observations were often in a journal of habitat profiles, as many kept notebooks of catches and notations of weather and or temperature. By the 1970s everyone felt it was getting warmer. Connecticut at one time had hundreds of small boat and inshore commercial fishermen who depended upon fresh catches of fish and shellfish to supplement other income when the weather closed in. Several long retired fishermen claimed that for them, New England’s weather was some of the harshest. Journals showed as few as 150 fishing days, to over 200 per year. Weather and not fish was to largely govern fishing economics to about 1940. Then many claimed habitat (quality) declined and then the fishing, too, but those harsh winters were rapidly becoming distant memories. The agriculture industry was changing from manure as soil enhancement to aqueous forms of chemically produced nitrogen compounds especially in the 1950s – an obvious source but some shellfishers urged caution - to them, the leaves and “black bottoms” were back and compounded now that people no longer burned them but now raked them into streets. All that organic debris ended up “on us.”

Storm or street water as it was formally called, was mentioned most often as the culprit nitrogen source, ground up leaves “called oatmeal” but so was open sewer pipes, farms and summer homes. Some early septic systems had direct overflow pipes to brooks and streams. Some of the eutrophication stories were at first hard to believe, such as nitrogen enhanced eelgrass stopping tidal flows in Niantic Bay in the 1960’s or fish kills in New Haven and Milford Harbor. But sufficient documentation exists that made these accounts credulous. Fishermen were convinced that several habitat shifts had already occurred, the most noticeable after severe winters or coastal storms. Hurricanes were mentioned as both negative (mostly by oyster growers) and positive by flounder, soft clam, bay scallop fishermen and clammers. Recent studies support these observations upon bay bottoms as waves (energy) would tend to cultivate and “clean” areas. Very few thought the habitats were better and they frequently mentioned water clarity or turbidity as evidence of pollution. Water clarity had measurably declined as with the fish and shellfish; so many shell fishers linked them together. It also was apparent that smaller bays and coves, those with reduced tidal circulation (flushing) had first seen habitat shifts. A very large Connecticut flounder fyke net fishery was largely gone by the 1930’s, such as the large Daniels family of Hamburg Cove’s fyke net operation in Lyme Connecticut. Today the Hamburg Cove bottom areas that supported this fyke net enterprise are filled with leaves and decaying organic matter. Hard nitrogen, not bacteria is the largest degradation of coastal environments. Fishermen had several factors to consider, a lack of coastal energy, warmer temperatures, “summer kills” and nutrient enhancement now combined with it seemed a growing source of leaves and residential grass clippings everywhere it seemed bottoms were filled with black mayonnaise and sulfur.

For those remaining shellfishers, it didn’t seem to matter. Large or small, near houses or not, black mayonnaise was building up everywhere. How could a golf course fertilizer impact shellfish in a cove miles away? Besides, I had already seen black mayonnaise begin damaging shellfish a decade before in Tom’s Creek in Madison, Connecticut. It was not near a wastewater treatment plant, nor near a golf course, or obtain huge amounts of sewage but I was from Connecticut and although I had small boat and shellfished, not much on the Cape. I had to pick my spots; after all, I was with the Extension Service USDA and all this talk about excess fertilizer, well a few times everyone would look at me.

I mentioned at one meeting that although I did represent an agricultural function of the University of Massachusetts, in a broad sense, the golf courses I was on were careful not to over do it (it was an expense) and too much would kill the grass. What the Cape had, as did home, was oak leaves. Leaves were everywhere and although excess nitrogen was just that, excess water-soluble nitrogen was far less damaging to shellfish than hard nitrogen in the form of oak leaves. Oak leaves in Madison as I described is what covered Tom’s Creek oysters and killed them. The water soluble (“soft”) nitrogen did not get “hung up” in the backwaters and collect in areas of low flush, it could be moved by tides – twice daily. I can recall one day on the Centerville River near Crosby shipyard looking down and just seeing oak leaf stems (it seems as though millions of them) looking like small clubs. It struck me that these must be very hard to break down (digest) (oak is the same wood I would build lobster traps from); it was tough and rot resistant. I wondered how their stems would break down in the Hyannis Plant lagoons.

If you look in quiet backwaters with oak trees you will see the stems, they’re impossible to miss. In this Barnstable example it was also hard to miss because in areas there were three feet of them, just stems. Soft nitrogen I explained could be moved by tides (even in sluggish areas) but leaves and other organics would stay and rot, a natural nitrogen and phosphate source of enormous consequence.

Besides the bay scallopers, the oyster growers also were concerned about the leaves. People then (1981-1983) still raked the fall leaves into the streets, as had been the practice until the leaf burning bans of the 1970s and absent that disposal option, they dumped them into the streams. When I accompanied Joe DiCarlo of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries on alewife run checks several times, he ranted about the leaves. Leaves were ruining the alewife runs and we couldn’t tell if it was a “natural” leaf or one dumped in; the end was the same. He didn’t worry about the fishers in fact he promoted it. People who come out and see what’s going on and would support the alewife resource down the road. The leaves he felt “destroyed the future” collecting in streams so that in heavy rains huge washouts occurred. One thing was for certain, Connecticut and Cape Cod had a lot of oak leaves and they were now filling the Cape alewife streams.

Leaves could blanket the bottom, leaves could suffocate oysters and leaves would rot releasing phosphate and nitrogen compounds – one thing I learned from my Cape Cod experience. Leaves were a force to be reckoned with. It was at times frustrating but it was as if black mayonnaise had followed me from Connecticut and there was nothing I could say or do to focus attention from fertilizer to something much more immediate, leaves were accumulating and rotting over once productive shellfish habitats. Although an agreement was recorded on sour bottoms and the loss of shellfish habitats, the nitrogen problem was now a “people problem” associated with land development. Shellfish closures from bacteria storm water all seemed to meld into one human caused event and it was easy to do if you did no have a historical baseline from which to measure.

What the shellfishers knew was at one time they could shellfish in certain areas and now they could not; the bay bottoms were once firm and shelly but now soft and muck filled. Once the shellfish closures came about, the scarcity of shellfish in the remaining open areas was the shellfishers’ fault. I tried to get spat fall survey going to see if reproductive capacity was still in place (oysters) but sets in Wellfleet seemed good in certain areas. Other oyster beds such as those in the Centerville River were buried three to four feet in leaf material. I had seen that before in Connecticut but again this was the Cape, not Madison.

It was discouraging for the shellfishers and me not having much advice to offer and reliving this shellfish loss all over again. It seemed as though black mayonnaise had followed me to these shellfish areas as well. Eventually, a split occurred between the shellfishers – more experienced shellfishers believing it to be a cycle while younger shellfishers were quite willing to assign blame to human nitrogen. I can’t be critical at the time, constant concerns about the Hyannis plant, a shortage of water, shellfish closures and now charges of overfishing (Cape Cod had a huge interest in recreational shellfishing connected to tourism) most definitely had the shellfish industry on the defensive side. They could see the habitat changes; those were real but in the absence of long-term information, pollution information won out and the source of the pollution? That was people. For an area that depended so much on tourism, it was a delicate balance; after all, the sewage had to come from somewhere.

I knew the Cape was hot and dry – water conflicts were increasing. I got called into a situation with a stolen pond. What actually happened was a cranberry grower tapped a retention pond to flood the vines prior to winter. The caller identified the fact that the water was now “gone” and blamed his neighbor. The problem of the case was that the house was finished in late spring and the first fall this homeowner saw a drawdown leaving a much-diminished pond which contained leaves. The scub and black oak trees, which surrounded the pond, shed leaves and in this leaf rot fish and wildlife struggled. On the second visit to the grower (who wanted me to remind his new neighbor he had sand rights to his property) agreed to put the water back, at least some of it. But I asked what about the leaves? It was a constant problem and source of acidic waters; they just didn’t break down and collected was the response. Every few years he would need to drag the pond, scooping out the leaves. Upon examination, the leaves in the pond were all black and mostly oak.

Some of the more experienced shellfishers had picked up on these black leaves as the source of the stems or the oatmeal mentioned so many times. Leaves in ponds, raked into streets and now accumulating in quiet backwaters of tidal areas. I then recalled the exchanges of the Hyannis Wastewater Plant staff. They were aerating day and night, desperate to keep oxygen in the lagoons so that organic matter could be broken down (“digested”), and what made it worse was the heat of the summer. Shellfishers were reporting the same in summer that some of the coves started to smell, like the salt marshes of Tom’s Creek on hot August nights in Madison, and the smell of the lagoons were similar. Oxygen was lessening and I believe now it was connected to the increase of Sapropel*. Sapropel is from two Greek words Sapros and Pelos – simply putrefied organic matter which describes the rotting of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. Every septic system has the foundation of sapropel and for a century the presence of oxygen important to the breakdown of sewage. In a 1948 bulletin titled “Sewage Disposal” (Stanley H. Osborn, Connecticut State Dept of Health Commissioner) on page 28 mentions this chemical process. “In order to secure good distribution of the sewage over tile fields or sand filters and allow some absorption of oxygen, it is desirable to provide intermittent applications of sewage. The interval between applications permits some oxygen to be drawn into the pores of the soil and trenches. Oxygen plays an important part in converting the sewage to a stable or non-putrefactive state. The septic tank is devoid of oxygen and the tank effluent is, of course, putrefactive.”


I don’t recall which meeting the division of opinion occurred, all I know was one group felt it was a cycle since the eelgrass war in the late 1960s and 1970s occurred. Previous hard shell clam beds were overrun by eelgrass, grass so thick it smothered the clams and made the bottom “foul.” Some had seen that happen, others wanted more information about nitrogen; was it the increase in people? When harvest energy was removed, the organic matter (black mayonnaise) buildup was quicker. Just as if someone had cut the power to the lagoon aerators could it all be the same? It was. Between meetings about the Hyannis Treatment Plant and shellfishers sounded remarkably the same. Heat and energy seemed to be as much as the cause than people. Reports from some Cape Cod fishers stated that in the 1950s and 1960s bay bottoms were firmer, harder and covered in bivalve shell. Now those same areas were dying. Small soft shell clams, it was mentioned, actually had tried to move, coming out of the bottom (some fishers in other states may have seen this also) due to the bottom becoming toxic. Some of the interest in cultivating was certainly apart of this but with the 1950s and 1960s it was colder and came more storms? Could the storms just be nature’s aerators?

I had seen this before in Tom’s Creek soon after its bacterial closure. Almost immediately the leaves began collecting and rotting, turning black and into a jelly that suffocated everything. I was 20 when Yankee Magazine (October, 1974) did an article titled, “Aquaculture and the Man with the Blue Thumb.5 “Dear Mr. Visel, Thank you for your letter of February 6th, 1985. We are pleased to grant you permission to reprint “Aquaculture and the Man With the Blue Thumb.” The credit line should read: “Reprinted with permission from the October, 1974 issue of Yankee Magazine, published by Yankee Publishing, Incorporated, Dublin, NH 03444. Thanks for your interest. Sincerely, Judson D. Hale, Sr., Editor”
It described Richard Burton, Brockton high school oceanography teacher and minister in West Bridgewater, cultivation device for increasing set capacity for the soft shell clam. A caption reads:

“Rev. Richard Burton, founder of Project Dominion, demonstrates his homemade cultivator. Seawater pumped through the device agitates the surface of an ecologically stagnant clam flat and adds oxygen and nutrients, resulting in a healthy set of clams.”

On Cape Cod I used to give out copies of this article at my Cape Cod Extension workshops (we had so little information about marine soil cultivation back then) and at the few Hyannis Plant meetings I attended. One Hyannis Plant staff member that’s the same thing we do with the sludge systems; “you can’t let them sit.” The cultivator device used by Mr. Burton was small - a pump, a piece of oil delivery hose (usually orange) and a piece of copper pipe. Basically the same equipment used on the Cape to jet pump clams (soft shells).

The motivation behind these marine soil cultivation experiments was quite succinct:

“As a former government biologist, he (Richard Burton) saw ‘billions spent in research’ and a vast amount of knowledge accumulated, ‘but it bothered me that at the end of a year you’d think over what you accomplished – and you learned a lot – but you couldn’t point to one solitary clam or oyster that was there because you helped it get there.”


and in the summer of 1972 he created a proposal called the New England Plan hoping to form a cooperative project for the New England’s marine fishing community and got approval from Scituate (no funds) to begin aquaculture experiments.

“After designing and building some equipment from discarded scrap metal, he received generous volunteer help from the U.S. Coast Guard, and eventually produced a good number of healthy clam sets on a flat that had been out of production for years.”

The cultivation experiments proposed by the Bourne/Sandwich shellfishermens association were no different than the aeration sludge systems at the Hyannis Plant. The only difference was the shellfishers of the Cape wanted to keep nature’s filter systems alive and with them healthy shell and finfish habitats functional. The shellfishers were ready to declare war upon black mayonnaise; they just never got the tools to do it. It was a habitat war they would soon lose as the climate continued to warm bacterial closures increased and with it, so did black mayonnaise.

One shellfish meeting in Sandwich, Massachusetts, one of the last the shellfish group had an argument broke out about the cause of shellfish loss, one side was blaming bacteria counts from swans to streets, the other group felt it was an enrichment problem, ranging from golf course fertilizers to sewage. In the middle of this discussion, it was decided someone would contact John “Clint” Hammond, a retired oysterman in Chatham, “He would know what to do.”

That someone was me.

Report 2 in a series of 5

I respond to all emails at tim.visel@new-haven.k12.ct.us
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