Research Brief: What is Impacting Soft-shelled Clam Survival in Interidal Mudflats

Dr. Chris Petersen, College of the Atlantic

What does your research hope to answer/investigate?

We are interested in the patterns of recruitment and survivorship of a commercially important marine intertidal species, the soft-shelled clam, Mya arenaria. We are interested in what processes might be implicated in its decline in recent years.

Please describe your process for investigation? Are there clear stages or benchmarks that your research project will have along the way?

Our process has been to do yearly field research from May – November, and then to use that work to build a database on the temporal and spatial variation in clam recruitment and survivorship in Bar Harbor. We summarize our yearly findings for the Bar Harbor Marine Resource Committee. At the end of five years, I think there should be a clear sense of what extent these processes are predictable on either temporal or spatial scales.
How does this research apply to what we might know about or how we might manage Acadia National Park?  

It does help inform the park on intertidal resources, in particular the potential for commercial harvest of clams in the park. It also engages a commercial harvester population that the park has been working on maintaining an association with.

How does this project help contribute to scientific understanding or management solutions beyond Acadia?

It contributes to the broader question of what factors are affecting population trends in intertidal shellfish, specifically of soft-shelled clams. This species is under pressure from multiple stressors, from climate change to invasive species and overharvesting. These are both basic research questions, but also applied questions about Maine’s third most important fishery (by landed value).