Abstract
In Connecticut, cultivation of the northern quahog, or hard clam, Mercenaria mercenaria L., relies on hydraulic dredging. After harvesting, leased shellfish beds remain fallow for varying durations to facilitate natural reseeding and to allow small clams to reach harvestable size. The interval between dredging events, or harvest history, may influence benthic ecology and response of communities to further dredging. Two clam beds with different harvest histories, located near Milford, Connecticut, were studied from July through October 2012. These leased beds, fallowed for 3 and 8 years, respectively, were subdivided into two plots. One plot on each bed was commercially harvested in July while the other remained not dredged. Sediment sampling was conducted on alternate weeks using Smith MacIntyre grabs and sediment cores to compare ecology of benthic communities and chemistry of marine sediments on newly dredged and not dredged plots within leases. Main effects of lease (harvest history), dredging treatment (dredged versus not dredged plots), mean sediment phi size (ɸ), and season (sampling date) significantly affected benthic community structure. Newly settled bivalves, including early successional pioneer species, occurred in high abundance on 3-year beds. Diversity, evenness, and number of species were high on the 8-year beds, while abundance of individuals was low, more typical of later successional equilibrium communities. Differences among a subset of species on the 8-year beds were observed between dredged and not dredged plots while no community differences were observed between dredging treatments on 3-year beds. Significantly more individuals were observed on dredged versus not dredged plots on the 8-year beds only. Our results suggest that harvest frequency and/or sediment ɸ size may explain differences in benthic assemblages between leased areas with different dredging histories, while dredging had no measurable effect on sediment chemistry.
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18 October 2017
The original version of this article unfortunately contained an error where the symbol for phi size was inadvertently omitted from the text.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Captains Robert Alix and Werner Schreiner, Genevieve Bernatchez, Kelsey Boeff, Natalie Huey, Joshua Paton, Jose Pereira, and Dylan Redman for the technical assistance and Gary Salce of G. and B. Shellfish Farm, in Stratford, CT, and Larry Williams of Jesse D. Shellfish Company, Milford, CT, for harvesting and for the use of their clam beds for this study. The use of trade names does not imply endorsement.
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A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-017-0208-0.
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Mercaldo-Allen, R., Meseck, S., Goldberg, R. et al. Effects of clam dredging on benthic ecology of two cultivated northern quahog beds with different harvest histories and sediment grain sizes. Aquacult Int 25, 1971–1985 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-017-0167-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10499-017-0167-5