Brunswick’s coast is full of nooks and crannies, many of which have not been accessible for a while because of the defense activities on the former Brunswick Naval Air Station. But, since more of the property has been opened to the public, there are new opportunities to get to some of these coastal inlets. Harpswell Cove is one of these. It is a lovely spot that you can get to via the Brunswick Topsham land Trust’s Kate Furbish East Preserve Trail. The trail wiggles down to the water in much the same way the water wiggles its way out of the cove when it drains out.
And, if you wiggle back from the cove and up the trail, you can follow the water source all the way up the Mare Brook watershed. This nearly six-square-mile watershed has a fascinating path as well as story. At the cove end, it is connected to input from the Merriconeag Stream. If you keep tracing it back, you can follow Mare Brook all the way across the base, across Harpswell Road, then through Meadowbrook, across Maine Street, and then petering out just across Baribeau Drive at Peary Drive. This is a truly complicated path going under neighborhoods, by ponds, culverts, pavement and many other urban interruptions. There has been much time and attention given to the restoration of the watershed and a plan is underway for a variety of improvements. The town Conservation Commission has been quite involved in this.
All that is to say that the waters that drain into Harpswell Cove come from broad swath of the town including a large stretch of the former Brunswick Naval Air Station. The inputs along its path have led to poor water quality in the past and, for that reason, the flats of the cove have been closed to shellfish harvesting. But, as conditions have begun to improve, the idea came about to help restore this once productive flat.
At that time, the shellfish resource had begun to experience a shift from soft shell to hardshell, or quahog clams. The hardshell clams were more resistant to predation by invasive green crabs that decimated the softshell population. For that reason, quahogs were the species to try. For a few years starting in 2017, volunteers transplanted juvenile and adult quahogs and some of them survived. But, to do a larger scale restoration, you had to get baby clams in there.
The way it works best, however, is that you don’t plant tiny baby clams, or seeds, but instead plant those that are a little bigger and heartier. This ensures a much better survival rate. The trick is getting clams that are at this slightly larger size. In order to do this, the town applied for and received some funding from the Maine Shellfish Resilience Fund and the Broad Reach Foundation. The goal was to grow seed clams in floating cages up to about 10mm in size. That was in 2019 and now the first clams have just been put into the mud – in Harpswell Cove.
To put in this first batch of clams, a group of five local clammers along with one of the town’s planner, Marine Patrol Officer, Coastal Resource Manager, and an Aquaculture Research Intern met at the head of the cove at low tide on June 4th. They were able to put over 500,000 clams in a 20-acre area of the cove.
What happens now? The area is closed for harvest, so that the babies will have a chance to grow undisturbed. Also, there will be consistent monitoring of what has been planted to see how well they survive. The hope is that this experiment will lead to the repopulation quahogs and that it will reach a point where commercial harvest is once again possible.
If you have a chance to walk down the Kate Furbish East trail to the head of Harpswell Cove, it is a truly lovely and quiet place. And, it is a fascinating example of the connectivity between what we do across town and the intertidal areas that connect us to the ocean.
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