Marine Resources Committee

The Marine Resources Committee administers the shellfish conservation program for the Town of Bar Harbor in collaboration with the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The goal of the program is to ensure the protection and optimum utilization of shellfish resources within the Town limits. These goals will be achieved by means including:

• Licensing
• Limiting the number of shellfish harvesters
• Restricting the time and area where digging is permitted;
• Limiting the minimum size of shellfish taken; and
• Limiting the amount of shellfish taken daily by a harvester.

Shellfish Management Plan

Meetings

• 4 p.m.
• The third Wednesday of every month

Members

Additional Information

See the Shellfish License page for more information on licensing and shellfish harvesting.

Before clamming in any area in Bar Harbor you should check to make sure the area is open. Potential shellfish closures are as listed:

• Bacterial closures
• Flood closures
• Red tide closures
• Statewide closures

Call the Department of Marine Resources Maine Red Tide and Shellfish Sanitation Hotline 1-800-232-4733 or 207-633-9571 with any other questions.

These state sites are important to check so that you can verify that there are no long-term or short-term local closures due to red tides, rain, or other activities that could contaminate shellfish. To check for these in Bar Harbor you can also call the Bar Harbor Harbormaster at 288-5571.

To get more general information on water quality in Maine, you can check out these websites:

• Eating shellfish and swimming
• Maine red tide closures

Maine Healthy Beaches

Maine Healthy Beaches is a volunteer monitoring program that measures for potential fecal contamination in water and serves as an advisory for swimming. Data on beaches in the Bar Harbor region are available online.

Research Articles

Several projects have been done on marine resources in Bar Harbor with support from researchers and students at College of the Atlantic and Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.

• Community-based eelgrass (Zostera marina) restoration in Frenchman Bay by Jane Disney and George Kidder. A 2010 Mount Desert Island Biological Bulletin paper on an eelgrass restoration project initially funded by a Gulf of Maine Council grant written by the marine resource committee.
• Do current recruitment enhancement methods increase juvenile soft-shell clam (Mya arenaria) recruitment in an intertidal clam flat? is a 2009 report that was part of a College of the Atlantic student senior project by Sarah Drerup.
• Resource management in a small Maine town: monitoring, conserving, and managing clam flats in Bar Harboris a 2007 report that was the basis of a College of the Atlantic student senior project by Kipp Quinby.
• Clam surveys and management in Bar Harbor is a 2003 report by College of the Atlantic students Kipp Quinby and Nina Therkildsen.

Hadley Point

This poster is posted at the signboard at Hadley Point in Bar Harbor and was designed by the Marine Resources Committee with help from Maine Sea Grant.