Speakers labeled via automated voice-based diarization + AI name-matching against the city's official roster. Automated transcription can still mis-hear a name during fast speech (e.g. a rapid roll-call vote) -- clear near-misses are auto-corrected, but this is not manually verified line-by-line. Treat names as a strong best guess, not an official record.
[0:08] Co-chair (presiding): Okay, good evening everybody, welcome to the September 23rd Rivers and Coast Waters Commission meeting. We have a brief agenda night, but a couple of important updates, so hopefully we can have a quick meeting. I know that Harbor Master Palestra and Manager Devereaux have been working a lot over time to deal with the current harmful algal bloom, the Mickey Motorway, that's currently off the coast of Brunswick, and so it'd be great if we could get an update on that, a couple other things, and then get these guys home. Right, all right, I guess we always start with a roll call. If we could start on this end. Sure, I'm Sue Stable
[0:53] Rachel Spadafore, citizen representative: Ford, I'm a citizen member. Rachel Spadafore, citizen representative. Corey To Burge, citizen
[1:00] Co-chair (presiding): representative. Co-chair Marco Melendi, shellfish representative, and chair the
[1:10] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: Endeavoral coastal resource manager, Chris Bollester, Harbormaster
[1:14] Doug Niven, citizen representative: Elan Marsh Hair Work, commercial representative. Doug Niven, citizen
[1:21] Rich Ellis, Town Council representative: alternate. Rich Ellis, Town Council representative. Lisa Trombley, resident in
[1:27] Rachel Spadafore, citizen representative: shellfish committee representative. Great, and online is Kathy Wilson, Town Council representative.
Public Comment
[1:36] Co-chair (presiding): Also great, thank you, thank you for joining us counselor. All right, I'd like to open the public comment period for non-agenda items. If anybody has any, I don't, I don't see any, anyone raising their hand online, nothing in the audience, so I'm going to go ahead and close the public comment period at this point. Thank you. We have no, we're not going to approve any meetings tonight, well, so we'll put that off until the next meeting, and we'll proceed right to
[2:17] Harbormaster Palestra: the Harbormaster report with Warden Balestra. So not a ton, I obviously Dan will talk more about this algae bloom that's been taking up a lot of my time lately, end of the summer, so we're just seeing a lot, a lot less boat traffic, a lot of the seasonal folks have pulled their docks and are gone, and yeah, McQuake Bay is shut down for all harvesting, and it's, it's kind of a nightmare and a headache right now in the shellfish world, so that's, that's my update. I
[2:47] Co-chair (presiding): I imagine, quick question about the, there's a, is there a cut-off date, so if you're a seasonal doc, you've got a certain time period, is there a cut-off date when seasonal docs have to not for
[2:58] Harbormaster Palestra: seasonal, no, okay, all right, great.
[3:03] Co-chair (presiding): Thank you, any questions? Not seeing any, let's go to the coastal
[3:10] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: Resource managers report. All right, I'll try to keep it relatively brief because some people sat through a presentation. The shellfish committee had an emergency meeting reference the bloom because we've experienced some extreme mortality. This bloom is pretty much throughout the Gulf of Maine from the north shore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts all the way up to Port Clyde. Big part of it's hanging out outside of the mid-coast region right now, and so we're really interested to see what happens this Friday and Saturday with the, with the storm coming in and storm predicted. So Larry, can you fire up that? I did change a little bit of the presentation. So one of the community members, Steve White, who has been around forever, his family's been around forever, and so hasn't that plane that we're flying in, he neglected to tell me it was an 80 year old plane before I agreed to ride in it, but it flew beautifully. And so we flew the New Meadows around to the Reach over to Harpswell Cove down to Wolf's Neck and back around near point, and this was one picture that I could capture in a very small cabin, but I want to thank Steve for taking us up, taking me up, and donating his time and his gas to do it. You can see the distinct stratification line in the water there. That's the bloom moving out and breaking up. You can see Paul's in the background, Paul's Marina and Sea Point Land Company mooring field. You can see how some of that water is sort of striated. So the bloom is actually in parts of the town The bloom is actually breaking up from what it was. I didn't have to, I didn't have the opportunity to have this perspective when it first started back in late August, but Steve informed me that it was a lot worse than what it looks right now from the air. So good news is it's breaking up. Bad news is that the impacts that come with a bloom breaking up are pretty atrocious. I guess you could say next slide, Larry. So just a little bit about Carinia mickey modi. This is another toxic phytoplankton. It's not a threat to humans, but it gives the marine organisms a heck of a time. It produces compounds that impact fish, and mortality reports have been reported with it. Our last one that we have noted as a mortality report was in 2017. When the cell counts reached up to 44 million cells per liter in Portland, and that was affecting shellfish and lobster. So this isn't something that's just isolated to shellfish, although the shellfish are the ones that are taking the brunt of it. We've had complaints of lobsters dying, flounder or halibut found dead, eels found dead, and other types of things. So it's, now the bloom is breaking up, we're dealing with low dissolved oxygen. Larry, can you click the little video that pictures a video and underneath there's a little thing. So you can see all the, this is a slide, this is how we do our phytoplankton analysis. You can actually see, that's a lot of cells, that's a lot of cells. This count was 13 million cells per liter, so and that was I believe in Thomas Point Beach. Next slide Larry. So something really interesting that Noah and Narcos ocean observing science folks do is they collect chlorophyll satellite imagery. Can't necessarily tell what it is, but you can see Portland up there at the at the in the middle, that's it's tagged, and you can see all of that yellow and green and all of that stuff that's that's part of the bloom. So the bloom is pretty large. Next slide Larry. If you go to the HAB website, if you if you type in NOAA harmful algal bloom monitoring, it'll bring you right up to the website, and you can see those they update those satellite imagery. That one was from yesterday, 9 22. This is McCoy Bay. We did take out the state pathologist and the nearshore resources manager. We've been working really closely with Darcy Kuchar from the town of Harpswell. She's the Harpswell harbor master, just so happens to be a professional microbiologist by trade, so that Harpsil's got a bonus there. She deals with phytoplankton. The middle picture is McCoy Bay. I think it was before, I think it was around 98 actually when I took that photo, but you can see the bloom progressing and the state pathologist and the DMR biologist took samples of worms and clams and everything else into taking them back and going to freeze them and do a little bit more histology and pathology on the gills. And that's that's a pretty detailed process. But when the impact first happened, what we saw, what we all saw when we were on the flats, is the far picture to the right. This is clams that are of certain size can still be mobile after they set into the benthic environment. If they if they set in an area where They don't like, they'll pop up and they'll let the tides move them around where they can settle in, but this particular, they popped up, they were surviving for a day or two, and we got a strong westerly wind. I don't know if you remember the big, it was about a week ago, we had a pretty good blow sort of out of the northwest, and it pushed them all up to the eastern shore, and I'll show you a picture next slide, Larry. So can you push play on this one, please? So this is McCoy Bay. This is the last day that they harvested in McCoy Bay. I think it was 9 11. It's not supposed to look like that, trust me. It's the black dark anoxic mud is where clams are dying, and possibly the carinia bloom has part of it has died out. So it in response to that, the shellfish committee had an emergency meeting requested with DMR to close McCoy Bay to harvesting, and DMR enacted a closure on McCoy Bay's intertidal areas for shellfish harvesting. The reason we do that is because there is seed that still survives at the top, there's also adults that may survive through this in any disruption or additional stress to them while they're already going through all this stress, and with the densities there, we figured it would be best just to leave them alone at this point and let them, let Mother Nature try to heal this area. Next slide, Larry. So you can see the McCoy Bay cell counts. I mean granted, we, did not do, I think we might have done McCoy Bay at the end of August, and we had a few cell counts, but we started at zero, the first one, excuse me, it goes up and then it goes back down, so you can see the bloom starting to die just through the phytoplankton cell counts. Next slide, Larry. So these are some dissolved oxygen counts. The first column, the 3,, 6, 3,, 6, 3, 6, those are depths that it's taken. The next column is the temperature. The next column is the saturation rate. And the next column is the oxygen per milligram per liter. Typically those are up between 8 to 10. Saturation rates when they drop below 60 can be pretty bad for marine organisms. So as you can see, the saturation rates are really low, and we've hired a consultant, I think everybody knows a Matt Nixon who's done other work for the town, to actually come out and do dissolved oxygen over top of the mud flats, right over top of the bed, so we know what the dissolved oxygen is, because it's in her title, we can't put a buoy that continually tracks because it will be out of the water. So we've hired him to Come do that. He's doing that over Harpswell Cove, Long Reach, Thomas Point Beach, McCoy Bay, Middle Bay, and then Bunganuck. So he's doing it over pretty much the entire town, and he'll be doing that probably every third, every second or third day. We'll be watching these numbers closely because these numbers are the numbers that we need to see before we even go back in and start to look at assessing these areas and what type of damage there has been to the biomass of shellfish in Brunswick area. Next. Slide, Larry. This is typically what you would see, and this is pretty intense. This was on the 18th of September, about seven days after we, about eight days after we started seeing the seed come up and sit, and then we had the big blow. So these pictures are all dead in or dying soft shell clams, and on the picture on the left is the precursor, the symptoms that we see with the clam necks hanging out of their holes and just sort of gasping for air. Next slide, Larry, if you can press play on this one. So. This is off Glen Michaels property off of Gundalo Gap Road. You can see the amount of mortality. Those clams range anywhere from four millimeters up to three quarters of an inch, and it's, they're just wind road in there, likely because of that strong wind that we had after they had come up and tried to get the boogie out of the McCoy Bay area. So next I learn these is Middle Bay. We didn't notice When we did our walkovers and flyovers the intense mortality in Middle Bay like we did in McCoy Bay. A lot. Of the mortality that really heavy mortality is on the Eastern shoreline, and that is in the town, actually in the town of Harpswell. So but we did find, you know, dead green crabs, dead shrimp. We counted out a few different plots doing surveys, and we had about ten alive legal clams to two dead legal, to two dead legal clams, fresh dead. So we don't know if we just haven't seen the impacts there yet or that area didn't get hit as hard. Further up in Middle bay off of catlin shore, crow islands, those areas. They're still harvesting from those areas, and there hasn't been any reports of from anybody of symptoms that we've seen in mccoy bay and in some in middle bay. But you can see on the lower left, the photo on the lower left is that's how thick the bloom is. The water was so brown, i mean it was brown probably as brown as I've seen it ever. Next slide, Larry, hit the play button on this one. So this is, this is the eastern shoreline. This is actually in the town of Harpswell, but you can see the seed. Popping up out of the flats and wanting to boogie. This is mostly, this seed is all perished. The interesting thing that we've noticed so far is it seems to be the intensity of the mortality seems to rely on the species. So soft shell clams are really susceptible because they have a soft shell. They're open all the time. They sit in the mud in there and have a neck that's exposed. Cohogs, on the other hand, we haven't seen any extensive mortality. Oysters, we haven't seen any extensive mortality. We're seeing increases in oyster mortality, but not a lot. But what we are seeing is empty guts in the oysters and likely in the co-ops that we sent up to Kennebec Bioservices because they're just not feeding right now. So if the boom persists for a long time and they're not feeding, they will starve themselves. So we're hoping that maybe this nice Northeast storm will push some of this out and break it up. Next slide, Larry. These are the cell counts again, a big spike in Middle Bay and now it's coming down. And the, it's just so happens that we started this phytoplankton monitoring program this year in the coastal resource office and we have caught a essentially probably one of, one of if not the biggest bloom that we've seen in southern Maine in a long time. So next slide, it was a day, it just took a day to go from, you know, or two, yeah, it takes that, it doesn't take long at all. And here's the dissolved oxygen counts in Middle Bay. You can see the DO on Catlin Shore where they're still harvesting is up above 60, but the Pennaville on the outside is low. So we'll continue to monitor those. Next slide, Larry. Just some more pictures, we did find live horseshoe crabs, we found live, we found live hermit crabs. So we knew at that point that the really the DO isn't as bad as it is in McCoy. We saw fish, small fish, silverside swimming around in the outer inner title. Next slide, Larry. This is more dead green crabs. This is Thomas Point Beach. Really interesting because the muscles seem to be also really impacted by this and I don't know. That's anecdotal evidence, but the muscles along Thomas Point Beach and underneath the rocks are all starting to die, like the one that you see that's opening up right there. Next slide, Larry. This is, this is a another aerial imagery. What we noticed early on with Thomas Point Beach as we noticed that the edges of the channel and the lower elevated flats we're getting, we're getting hit by Mortality worse than above, but when these flats have been recently disrupted and the clams really having a difficult time mustering up the energy to dig themselves back in. Next slide, these are Thomas Point Beach cell counts. We don't think we've seen the full impacts of this yet. We're monitoring this area closely, really closely, the all the new meadows because it's it's showing the same symptoms in McCoy, and then you can see it went from 12 million to seven, now it's going back up to three. Yesterday, so it's we could see bc in a second bloom there in the new meadows. Next slide, and these are all the new meadows dissolved oxygen counts. They were pretty good when we took these 9 16, almost I guess a week ago now. You can see that at the marina was our lowest real scores, and you know that's down to fifty nine point three, fifty five point eight, right at the marina where the restriction is, where the water comes out of the upper lakes. Next slide, these are some of the some of the pictures. Of more mortality at Thomas point beach. Next slide, Harpswell Cove, you know we just did yesterday. I've never seen so many dead and dying sand worms in my entire, over the course of my entire life. They were covering the flats and it was it was pretty bit stinky. We did we did find clams, you can see on the box there's you know small clams that are also we found at the surface and some what appear to be healthy adult clams. In other words, when we when we kind of make our observations and take notes. You know, does the clam have a strong thick foot, does the clam does the clam retract attract its neck quick enough it doesn't go all the way back in the shell, those types of things, is the clams super skinny and the foot is starting to deteriorate. So those are some of the observations, and then ones in Harpswell Cove looked healthy, but I don't think for much longer. Next slide, so we're going to continue to monitor. You can see we've been working with all of the Bluesonde folks, Bluesonde is a. Real-time continually monitoring network that's shared amongst all the farms, pretty much all the farms on the outsides of these bays. So, Muir Point has been gracious enough to let us look at their buoys, let the town look at their buoys. Main Ocean Farms has also been gracious enough to let the town look at their buoys. Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center has graciously allowed us to also continue to monitor their buoys. And it's really nice, because you've got a nice dashboard, and you can see the DO drop during the evenings. And it'll even, if you want, send you a nice text message if the DO goes too low. So not much we can do about it, but anyway. Next slide. So, just a quick summary, you know, it's a combination of environmental factors that cause these blooms. I don't think this is something, this is the type of bloom that is a result of excess runoff because it's been dry. I don't think it's a result of excess fertilizers or pesticides or things like that in the water. This is just a bloom that has happened. Carinium micumotoi is here now. It's been here probably prior to being identified in 2017. We were picking it up in our June phytoplankton, but we were only picking up one or two cells when we identified it. But we do know that it can bloom fast and it can die fast. And because of the way our bays are set up way up in the inside with certain types of winds, southerly winds that keep the surface up whether the tides high in the day or low in the day all determines about how that bloom grows and how it dies throughout its life. So by far the biggest mortality event I've ever seen in 35 years here in Brunswick, but also by far the most dense shellfish beds we've ever had since I've been here. So when you have densities like that you have a lot of competition for food and when they're stressed and resources are low and there's no oxygen then you end up with something with a big mortality event. And so We'll continue to monitor, our game plan is to try to assess the impacts. We're working with the Maine Coast Fisherman's Association, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Manumet Fisheries on the side of trying to establish how much of the biomass, how much of the biomass we lost in soft-shell clams and how much that equates to economically. Economically and how big of an impact that is to the harvesters and then they do their stuff at the federal level. In try to get some type of help if the harvesters are end up having to need that. So, I think that's it next slide. Larry, I think you're done. Yeah. So we've been out obviously, the tides come whenever they won't want, you know, whether it's night or day. So, you know, we go out, we're out in the morning, out in the evening, and it just so happens that we have to be out there both at low tide and at high tide to make those observations. So it's like, you know, we're out quite a bit trying to get samples up. We've sent samples to Kennebec Bioservices, Biosciences for histology and pathology on clams, quahogs, lobsters. We've worked with DMR to get them worms and get them all the information that we're getting from the deal monitors to them. We're working with Bigelow labs who was sent off water quality studies when the concentrations were high to a different lab on the west coast that's going to look at the type of carinia and the DNA and all of the complex things that researchers love to look at and try to figure out whether this is a different type of carinia mickey moti that actually kills shellfish because typically it doesn't necessarily kill shellfish, it's the stress that it causes them that kills shellfish compounded with low DO. So they've done a bunch of slide work and they look at the gills and they do all of the all of that stuff that is beyond high school, my high school biology class. So that's pretty much it, we're doing as much as we can do, which really isn't much but monitor and try to manage around it, you know, like I said, the shellfish committee called that emergency meeting closed to McCoy Bay because not only, you know, do we understand that if we stress them more we're only going to hurt the future, and DMR was, it's one of the first closures I've ever seen DMR turn around so quickly and do it with the commissioner's approval. So they've been right alongside us on our hip with this thing, and so hasn't Darcy Kuchar from Harpswell and the folks from the Friends of Casco Bay have been awfully helpful in getting their boats up here deployed to get outside DO temps in areas where we think the bloom is impacting. Reports from fishermen, like I said, dead halibut in Mirapoint Bay. Egg bearing lobsters, the eggs essentially rotting off them. them so there's a lot a lot going on in this low D.O event is a big one. So anyway that's all I got, I'll answer any questions all
[28:59] Co-chair (presiding): righty well very thorough thank
[29:01] Speaker G (unidentified): You for that. Any questions for guests? I don't know if you know much about Mickey Motai, but is it, is it faster acting than the red tide kind of blooms that we see before? I'm just kind of stunned at how fast it grew. Is it, is it better at that, do you know? Is that, I don't, I'm, I've
[29:21] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: studied a little bit of Mickey Moni. I haven't, I haven't understood the life cycle of it and how long, you know, it lives. But based on the two incidents that I've seen with Mickey Modi, it blooms and it dies pretty darn quickly, and I think it has a lot of, there's a lot of variables involved in that, you know, sunlight, nutrients, you know, McCoy, Middle, the New Meadows, they're all, they gather nutrients. That's why shellfish grow here so well, you know, the phytoplankton is good for shellfish, and that's why they grow here. So, you know, that Mickey Modi stuff seems to like grow like sunflowers, I guess. We'll find out. Yeah, find out more later. Cool.
[30:05] Rachel Spadafore, citizen representative: I had a quick question too. Thanks, Dan, that was really thorough. I had like three other questions and you answered them all, so, but one of them I was wondering is if there's any metrics that you wish you could be looking at right now that maybe we don't have the capability to, or if there's, yeah, something you wish that we could also be looking at. I think sediment
[30:29] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: characteristics would be really good to look at in these types of situations the blood the mud is pretty much anoxic now if you walk across it you have a trail of black whereas we were out in Harpswell Cove which hasn't really flipped yet and you walk across in this stays gray if we Chris took the airboat across McCoy Bay from Banganock and we looked at it from a drone and it was black just black lines and normally it's just a gray line a solid gray line so getting some sediment characteristics and we're some of the ngos are kicking that around dmr doesn't really have the capacity to do that but i know that i know that 's that's part of it and if we got the opportunity when the mud is so anoxic to do it right now we should be pounding four by four inch pvc piping in there yeah at least taking cores and freezing them you know so
[31:27] Co-chair (presiding): Thanks, so when you think about it, as it blooms it looks good like that. The cell count is going down, but that means there's a lot of dead and dying cells that sink to the bottom and they rot and they consume oxygen. And so you get this anoxic blanket, and anything that's living underneath and the sediment is now trapped underneath an anoxic blanket and that's, and so you get that black. So I think it's also worth stressing that Karenia, some of the species in Karenia produce brevetoxin and are a threat to humans. I don't believe this produces brevetoxin and I don't think it's directly dangerous to humans. However, if the intertidal is in that bad a shape
[32:13] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: but suggest avoiding it. Well, those poor guys on the eastern shoreline of McCoy Bay from Pulsifers Point down to Gondola Gap or fit any way that I mean, they can't keep their windows open. Yeah, I mean, if you drive in these areas and you go home you still smell it as you can smell it on your clothes, you can, your hands, it's it's it's it's pretty bad, the decomposition right now that's going on.
[32:47] Harbormaster Palestra: I think it's great that Brunswick and Harpswell has been working together on this and I'm curious about Freeport and the western shore of McCoy Bay.
[32:59] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: has that been affected as much the bunganuck area which we would consider sort of the northwestern shore of McCoy Bay is pretty much been hit pretty hard I would say 80 to 90 percent loss in bungalow we haven't been to the western shore but we have been communicating with Freeport so we've been we've been they don't have number one their harbormaster isn't a microbiologist he's a law enforcement officer by trade so he's like leaning on Brunswick and Harpswell to provide information and they're giving us their observations. Also DMR is collecting, going out and also assessing these, so they were in Freeport, they went to Cumberland, they've been to a few other places that are experiencing the same impacts. We just hope it, state, you know, it stays out of the mid coast region. We haven't heard of a lot about yet whether it's impacting that, but very well could with that northeast wind exchange this weekend. So and we've talked to everybody from Ireland to Massachusetts to Louisiana to the Virginia Institute of Marines, I mean, it's been really impressive to see all the people come together that understand ocean dynamics and really care about, you know, what's going on at the microscopic level, come together and like put their heads together and start really thinking about, okay, what don't we know about this and what do we need to know more, and then they're bringing in managers and folks like Chris and I to say like, okay, well, what would have helped you guys do this, you know, better. Forecasting that type of stuff, you know, I'm not sure that we can stop Mother Nature when she decides to do something like this and all the conditions come together, but all right, but helping us be able.
[35:01] Co-chair (presiding): To predict this, so I'm sure all these other communities, they're, you know, worried about when it's going to be their turn, and so whatever we can learn from this event to help stave off future events or at least be able to predict them, super important, so there might.
[35:16] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: Be a way to aerate the flats or something like that with the low deal, I've just been pounding my head off the wall trying to think, how do you bring the do up in a, in a 3,000 acre bay.
[35:27] Rich Ellis, Town Council representative: I don't know, I don't know if you can, counselor, I was going to say it doesn't sound like there are remediation or prevention measures yet because of being the scope and scale of what you're dealing with, it is the ocean after all, but this is not the first bloom we've had of this, I mean, I mean, if I'm recalling, there was one in 2017, 2019, does having these, and this one certainly at a greater scale, does that predict or suggest that we may be prone to these and should expect them more frequently in. The future, or like, is there any information that would sort of suggest that it looks like we're, you know, for whatever reason, a hot spot for these, now it's sort of starting.
[36:07] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: to look like that I mean I think there's been some blooms in Brunswick that haven't been predicted or found out that they're carinia but they've killed clams they've killed small amount you know small spots and I usually don't get too excited about that because I know that 's gonna happen but you know we've never done intense studies on is this carinia you know 2017 was a tense to study we had one in 2019 we had another bloom kill in 2021 really small and isolated but it seems like that we're On this track to have to deal with this, and we just got really hit hard with this gigantic one that came in from offshore with the right winds and the right title exchange and things like that. So, and do they change?
[36:54] Rich Ellis, Town Council representative: the distribution is it when you showed the picture of the accounts and you stood a lot of things swimming in there I'm presuming are there other dinoflagellates in there or is it just like the total count of everything that's in there when this happens does it drowned out other phytoplankton as
[37:09] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: Dr. The concentrators were mostly Carinia, but what was tricky in the beginning of this bloom is you had a Scripsilia phytoplankton blooming at the same time. It's the same color, it looks very familiar, so DMR does, I mean, if they would actually give the information that they actually work on during the summer time about with all the different types of phytoplankton, you'd be amazed because they know exactly where these blooms are having and they know exactly what type of phytoplankton they are. Yeah, and that's a good question. I don't know how
[37:46] Co-chair (presiding): a big bloom like this affects, you know, all the other species that are that are there.
[37:52] Rich Ellis, Town Council representative: Like, could you have two blooms happen at once, which would be even worse, like, yeah, this is kind of what again, or do they kind of suppress one another as well? That's kind of, I don't know
[38:01] Co-chair (presiding): the answer to that. I think you probably can get multiple blooms, yeah, at once, but thank you for the information and like that you mentioned the grid, the picture of the mouse around, so just that's probably a cedric rafter counting cell, so that's a one millimeter by one millimeter grid
[38:16] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: that you were looking at, so really small, that's why the water's brown. So if you start to see water codes, that's what I try to, because you know the pilot, some of the pilots that I know like Steve that, you know, they didn't know, they didn't know to call anybody, but when you start to see that stuff, I mean, it's it's definitely worth letting somebody know that can let other people know in the science community and the monitoring community, because you know, have we known all the seed was gonna wash up on the eastern shore pop up out of the flats, we may have been able to get over there and collect some of that seed, get it out to oxygenated water and help it survive through it, and then replant it, but you know, we just we didn't know that was gonna happen.
[39:00] Co-chair (presiding): It so also I wonder if we had any separation capabilities, like I don't know if that, if we'd be able to help save some seed that way. Yeah, I'm not sure if anybody's tried that. Someone's probably tried it. I don't know if there's been any success. Yeah, it might be worth looking into.
[39:19] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: Separation or wet storage offshore, you know, the problem is you don't want to move a carini impacted animal right to another area that's not impacted by the Karen, yes, so
[39:31] Doug Niven, citizen representative: That's the tricky part. So can I ask a question for the non science minded people? I'm looking at this, you know, wondering how similar the pattern would have been from 2017 as far as the weather, the temperatures of the summer, the tides, you know, the pattern of the tides at that point is, does anybody read kind of check back over that and see how much they pair with 2017? There are
[40:05] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: People working on that. Mike Dolan from the Friends of Casco Bay is working on that analysis now. We also did a wind analysis to see, you know, mostly August, a lot of percentage of the wind in August was south out of the southwest west, and then about the first week of September it was just, it was a complete flip-flop and it came from the northwest. And so, you know, what, something happened there and we think that has a part of the distribute how it distributed the bloom throughout Brunswick.
[40:35] Doug Niven, citizen representative: and does it start like is it 's so large in size is this something that just came in and developed overnight does it move slowly up the bay from like Portland is it something that we should have seen coming or did it just kind of it doesn't move up it just comes in and it's just I don't I don't know how to describe exactly what I'm asking but is it something that Portland would have experienced first so we knew it was it could be coming our way or did it just come in overnight and then
[41:11] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: development size yeah I think it's a lot of multitudes of factors you know this tidal mixing things like that wind direction you know our bays are long and shallow they're very shallow that's why you don't see a lot boats up there you know so there 's there's there's all of those dynamics and I don't think any one person can put those together again and Helen I think it's
[41:37] Co-chair (presiding): also accepted that Mikimoto I is kind of ubiquitous at certain times around here so we know we 've got it 's when conditions are right so I don't know that it's one bloom that spreads but it's around and when the conditions are right it blooms so if you could follow those conditions you might be able to
[41:59] Doug Niven, citizen representative: Predict, okay, because they just feel like, I wonder how much is similar to 2017. I mean, I, you know, if you work on the water, you see the same patterns, it seems like. And you see the, you know, I look at the tides every day. I couldn't tell you. I know what the tides were for today, but yesterday I had to look up the tide. I don't even know when high tide is, but I look at it every day. So it's like, you know, but you see the winds and you see the lack of rain. And, you know, so I just wondered how much of that was similar to 2017.
[42:32] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: We'll update you next time.
[42:34] Doug Niven, citizen representative: I know who to ask now. That's right. Are
[42:39] Co-chair (presiding): there any other questions for Dan regarding this incident? And I'm sure we'll get updates over time because it's, it's still developing. All right, and I don't see any questions online, so it's 6:40, just a quick time check. Commissioner correspondence, this is usually an area, a time when we ask folks from other commissions or other representatives to be able to bring those things as being from the shellfish committee. This is, this was sort of our thing, so unless somebody else has something they really wanted to go with, we could move on the agenda. All right, can I mention something, Marco? Please.
[43:28] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: Do so, the town received an award and I think Council Ellis knows this, that for the comp, comprehensive plan from the American Planners Association or something like that. I just wanted to make sure that folks were aware of that to
[43:56] Rich Ellis, Town Council representative: wait until it gets more publicly revealed. Apparently there's a ceremony. Oh, okay, we jumped the gun on that, and so there will be a formal posting on the website announcing that. But that's not your fault, because they announced it at our council the other day and they found out the next day that they probably should have waited. So I'm not imagining there are hundreds of thousands of people watching this show, so
Unfinished Business
[44:15] Co-chair (presiding): I don't feel uncomfortable sharing that. All right, great, thanks. And as I mentioned, we were gonna suspend the minutes and review that at the next meeting, so we can skip that item. We already sort of covered the agenda item number one in the harbor's masters report. Old business, I had one item that I was just gonna read a letter that we got from Free the Andro, and I won't read the whole thing, I'll just try to be quick, but many of us have been following Free the Andro for anybody that doesn't know. This is a group of local folks and conservation organizations like Trout Unlimited another they're trying to get together and have a positive effect on the FERC, the Federal Energy Relicensing Commission that's working on the Brookfield Dam renewal right now. And so one of the main issues is the fish passage that's currently existing is not great. It's not even good. So we would love to get some improvements as part of that. And Free the Andro is really making a big effort. They had a public meeting at Curtis Memorial Library on September 15th was a panel discussion this is a letter from Chip spees who's the president of free the andro or FTA as referenced in this letter and I'll just read a couple of things that he said just trying to raise awareness that this effort is going on so they just finished this second public event it was a panel discussion focused on the migratory fish passage design and what might be possible for the Brunswick Dam I think they had a reasonably good turnout conservation groups and other interested parties the panel representatives are from the Maine Department of Marine Resources the dam's owner Brookfield and then consultants FB environmental and they explored possibilities and strategies to restore the fish movement up and downstream past the Brunswick dam there were a lot of perspectives and deeply felt emotions on this topic but what came through the panel discussion and following Q&A session was a shared interest in fixing the blocked fist passage problem that has gone on for such a long time it's early stages in a multi-year process of dam relicensing and the FTA is committed to making sure that any relicensing includes the means for abundant and sustainable fish dam passage and so to that effort he's calling out if anybody is interested in that effort to please support FTA not just in terms of financial support but also talent and so they're particularly looking for anyone that has a background and experience in dealing with dam relicensing to contact them they're also looking for people to help with legal counsel coordinators educational outreach database management so the effort is getting bigger and bigger and so they need more and more talent this is largely a volunteer I think it is an all volunteer effort so if you are interested in this idea and feel that you could help I'm sure they would really love to hear from you the person to contact is Tom Whalick and the email that i've been given to that I can give out is Tom at waylickllc.com, so it's t-o-m at w-a-l-e-k l-l-c dot com. And moving forward, the FTA is leading to the January 27 deadline for reviewing, so just January 2027, not January 27th, but deadline for reviewing and filing comments regarding the proposed fishway alternatives. That okay, so they're targeting to have all this in place by this October. This effort in terms of new volunteers, and they're just sending out an all call for everyone's help, and he just signs off saying he's going to keep putting out these updates. I know that there's a website free the andro all one word dot org, and they also have a Facebook group where you can get information. So if you want to follow along with their work, there are multiple options. All right, so I just wanted to get that word out because I think it's extremely important for Brunswick that these dam re-licensings happen once every 50 years. So this is our chance right now to affect that fish passage which doesn't work very well, and so the next one might be, you know, 53 years away. So let's try to work on it this one. Any questions or thoughts? Great. Great. Any new business? Is there anything that somebody would like to bring up and discuss?
[49:33] Rich Ellis, Town Council representative: It just struck me as you were raising that, 's something that I had become aware of. I know this came before this body. Dan, I think you had been at the meetings for this. But I know that progress is moving forward on the Coombs Road culvert project. I was reached out to by the Public Works Department. Their work they've reached a point where they're reaching out to a budding property owners to discuss the need for temporary and permanent easements for the project, and so that continues to move forward. The solution that was selected with that I believe was a single 24-foot culvert is what was selected for that, and so that's where they're moving with that one. And then something that's a little bit more out of my frame of reference but I have awareness of the culvert related to Jordan Avenue which has a waterway that runs through that as well has been postponed. It was supposed to be this fall, but there was a temporary delay in the ability to deliver that culvert, and so they will be waiting on that one in regards to those two water flows. So it's just a supply issue, it's not that they're rethinking it or anything. My understanding from the correspondence is that I was made aware of is that the vendor was not able to deliver the specialized culvert in time for the project to happen, and I believe there's a cutoff date for when you can do it because of, I think maybe fish movement or something along those lines. And I can attest, as a young boy, to have caught trout in that little river that runs all the way from there all the way back down behind Edwards Field and in that area. I never ate them, but they're fun, like this big.
[51:05] Co-chair (presiding): That's great, they're fun and they're colorful at that size, it's a lot of fun to catch, so yeah, absolutely, thank you for that. And talking about trout, have we met since the Coffins Ice Pond announcement of that damn remake? I don't think so, I don't think so. This is something that it was described more at the recent Conservation Commission meeting, but essentially the Coffins, Coffin's Ice Pond, so the one that's right behind Maine Pines Tennis, not Coffin Pond. But Coffin's Ice Pond has that little dam, and what to do with that has been an issue for a while. The Mayor Brook Watershed Implementation Committee has been looking at it, and Ashley Charleston, Town Environmental Planner in Brunswick, has been working on this for a long time. But we ended up with a final solution to what's going to be done, and I think it's actually a very good one. I think we got a little lucky there. I thought it was the best of the options, and it also turned out to be the least expensive of the options, so it's great when that lines up. But what's going to happen is that rather than removing or replacing that dam, it's going to be incorporated in a series of rock fish pools that fish will be able to naturally sort of climb up over and then down into that, so it'll, it'll maintain the same water level, which will allow for the thermal refuge on the other side for trout, which I think is in Portland and in Marybrook, but Marybrook also operates as part of Brunswick stormwater management system, so that ability to have X amount of reservoir there will also be preserved. So I think this is a great development, I think it's gonna happen inside the next two years is what I remember hearing, but I will, I will defer to Ashley absolutely on that, but it's gonna happen and I think it's, it'll be nice when it's done, so I just wanted folks to be aware of that quick.
[52:58] Chris Bollester, coastal resource manager/Harbormaster: Question, what about the sediment buildup?
[53:03] Co-chair (presiding): I'm again going to defer to Ashley. Actually, there are competing visions of what should be done with that, and I have my own, and I'm I'm not sure I'm winning, but it's an issue for sure. Because it is built, it is filling in fast. And so some people are like, what are we going to do to, you know, maybe we should, you know, let it go back to the normal brook. Well, I'm telling you that is happening very quickly, whether we want it to or not. So it's not a matter of whether we restore it to just a stream. It's do we want to, do we want to deal with the sediment that is coming. And I live right by there, so I've been watching it over the years, and if this was a natural sedimentation rate, it would have filled up a long time ago. So this is something that's happening now. I would also say, like, does it work as well as part of the stormwater management system? If it does fill up, you know, there are other considerations to think about. But as you look out at it, there's a little bit of a deep channel on the right if you're on the fishing bridge. But a lot of that rest that I used to kayak in there before I realized you could not kayak in there. And a lot of it is it's like this deep. It's a puddle. It's not a it's not a gradual pond basin, so there are there are folks working on that, and I will defer to them, but it's a very good question I.
[54:37] Rachel Spadafore, citizen representative: Had a quick thing I wanted to share since you mentioned events at Curtis Memorial. I think they're doing a collaboration with moderation brewery October 29th. There's a lecture on microalgae for like biotechnology purposes, so this group might be interested in some of the benefits of microalgae. So I just wanted to share that, and you know when that is, October 29th from 6 to 7 p.m. at moderation brewing. I think a scientist from Bigelow is giving that lecture, so could be fun. Is it.
[55:24] Speaker G (unidentified): Because it's a brewery, is that why they.
[55:25] Rachel Spadafore, citizen representative: Have them, you might have to go and find out. I'm not affiliated with it in any way, I just thought.
[55:30] Rich Ellis, Town Council representative: Just a curious collaboration, how else do you think you lure people to listen to algae discussions.
[55:36] Co-chair (presiding): All right, well thank you very much. Any more announcements? All right, I think it did pretty well tonight. It's 655. Could I entertain a motion to adjourn? Okay, so moved and seconded. All in favor. All right, meeting adjourned. Thank you very much everybody.