Shellfish Commission reviews grand experiment

“This has been kind of cool,” said George Davis, vice-chair of the Shellfish Commission at its meeting on Tuesday. Davis was speaking of the grand experiment he and others on the Shellfish Commission conducted over the course of the past year.The goal was to see if soft-shell clams could be successfully grown from seed and then distributed into the Great Salt Pond. Although there is a wild population of softshell clams, the numbers do not support their harvest, and the pond has been closed to the taking of the mollusks for years.There have been past efforts by the commission to seed the pond with softshells, which need protection from predators, whether of the human or crab variety. Nets were used to cover them while they buried into the sand. But, those efforts were deemed unsuccessful.Commission members have long looked north to the state of Maine for guidance on how to grow out soft-shells and Davis has invested a lot of time and energy not only studying, but putting into practice a method of growing out the seed.Along with other volunteers on the commission, Davis created and scientifically monitored six different plots in the GSP. Six were at Andy’s

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