UMass marine station pitches a North Shore shellfish research network to Gloucester clammers

Gloucester's Shellfish Advisory Commission spent most of its Oct. 20 meeting with scientists from the UMass Amherst Gloucester Marine Station in Lanesville, who want to build a North Shore Shellfish Network to answer the questions clammers and constables have never had the time or money to study. No votes were taken.

What happened

• The marine station is waiting to hear on funding for the network, which would start with Gloucester, Essex and Ipswich and the state Division of Marine Fisheries. An answer is expected in a couple of weeks.
• Little River is open for the clamming season as of Oct. 15. The upper Mill River stays closed because of high bacteria counts.
• The state green crab trapping grant is back for 2027. The amount is not set yet, but harvesters were told to start trapping.
• The city's 60 clam seed boxes come out of the water starting next week.
• A change to the commercial daily catch limit is still on hold until the state sends the landings data the commission asked for.

A research network for North Shore clams

The station's director, Katie Kahl, said the idea grew this summer out of talks with the shellfish constables in Gloucester, Essex and Ipswich and biologists at the Division of Marine Fisheries. Constables spend their time on enforcement, she said, and the state spends its time on water quality testing, so basic questions go unanswered: how fast clams grow on one flat compared with another, how dense the population is, how that has changed over time, and what green crabs are eating.

If the funding comes through, the station plans focus groups with constables, state biologists, clammers and seafood processors to set a priority list, then put students and faculty to work on it. The network could grow to include Rowley and Newbury, Kahl said.

Chair Anthony Murawski, a commercial clammer since the early 1990s, said Gloucester has the third largest soft shell clam area on the North Shore, after Ipswich and Essex, and that some flats on the east bank of the Annisquam River have not seeded in 20 years. He and a clammer in the audience said the productive flats are on the marshy west side, while flats below the developed, sloping east bank have gone bad, and asked the station to study runoff from cleared and fertilized yards. Kahl said a UMass salt marsh program already has satellite and air photos of every marsh in the county back to the 1930s that could show the change.

Kahl said the station, open since 1964, has started about 35 projects with about $8 million in research funding since a new UMass team arrived in 2018, hosted more than 40 summer interns and just finished a $4.5 million outdoor renovation with a new dock. Housing for students is its biggest limit. It is hiring an assistant director and a marsh ecologist.

The constable's report

Shellfish Constable Rebecca Visnick said Little River opened for the season while she was in Seattle presenting the city's clam seed box project at the International Shellfish Restoration Conference. The city has 60 boxes out this year, set in April, a month earlier than last year, and will start pulling them next week to count and plant the seed.

The green crab grant, which pays trappers a bounty for the invasive crabs that eat young clams, is confirmed for 2027. Visnick said the state has not set the dollar amount.

The upper Mill River has been closed for about a year and a half to two years because of high fecal coliform counts. Visnick said the area is classed as conditionally approved, not prohibited, so it can reopen once the monthly state tests fall below the limit. They have not, and the counts jump around with no pattern. Murawski said residents have been seen feeding ducks there. He asked Visnick to request the monthly count sheets so the commission can look for a season when the water is clean enough to ask for a winter opening, the way Clamshell Point and Jones Creek came back after about five years closed.

The catch limit waits for data

The commission has talked for about six months about raising the daily limit for commercial permits, an idea brought by a longtime clammer who said prices and limits have not kept up with inflation while the number of full time diggers and open days have fallen. Visnick said about 10 to 15 clammers work regularly. Murawski said the commission is still waiting for the Division of Marine Fisheries to send daily catch reports, which every commercial permit holder files monthly.

Visnick said landings are only part of the picture; the commission also needs population data, and she hears anecdotal reports of fewer clams. The clammer agreed the commission needs data before any change and suggested the new network build one shared database for Gloucester, Essex and Ipswich. No limit figure was proposed and no vote was taken.

Also at the meeting

• Murawski said the commission's 2026 minutes have not been posted on the city website and asked Visnick to find out who posts them.
• The June and September minutes were not approved because the members present had not attended those meetings.

What happens next

• The marine station expects word on its network funding in a couple of weeks and said it would come back when it has news.
• The commission meets monthly. Its next meeting had not been posted on the city website early Saturday.

Where to find the records

• Shellfish Advisory Commission agenda, Oct. 20
• Meeting recording, on the city's 2026 Past Meetings page
• Commission members, city appointments page

Earlier coverage: Tuesday on Cape Ann (Oct. 19), the agenda preview. Gloucester wetlands board OKs Little River pier with limits, pool, docks (Oct. 18), the Conservation Commission's Little River vote.

How we did this: Cape Ann Current watched the meeting online and checked names against the agenda and the city's appointments page. These are our meeting notes, not the city's minutes.