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FALMOUTH — On any given day, research assistant Kelly Alves’ car is full of moon snails.
The little-understood marine species is thought to prey on sea scallops, and that’s as good a reason as any for Alves and her colleagues at the Coonamessett Farm Foundation to learn more about the animal — and all the ways to catch, kill, and potentially market it as seafood. The work comes with hazards.
“One time in New Bedford, I picked them up and there were 100 pounds or so of moon snails in these boxes with holes at the bottom, so the slime just oozed all over the back,” research assistant Emily O’Toole said.
The scientists’ foray into moon snail research is part of a larger federally funded initiative to adapt New Bedford’s scallop fleet for potential new frontiers. Scallop trawlers spend over 300 days a year tied up at the dock. Coonamessett Farm Foundation’s research is working to get them back in the water — even if it means chasing some far-flung fish.
Senior research biologist Samir Patel leads the team of scientists pursuing a number of projects to repurpose or retool scallopers for new uses and markets. Some, like the moon snail project, involve exploring entirely new species these boats could fish besides scallops. Others involve developing new user-friendly research technology that can make scallop trawlers operate more like research vessels.
“We’re not trying to make scallopers more adaptable,” Patel said. “We’re trying to take advantage of how adaptable this industry already is.”
‘Panda bears’
Because scallop booms in 2019 and 2022 drove overinvestment, the scallop fishing industry is now overextended, fisheries technologist Farrell Davis said. Vessel owners stocked up on boats that now spend most of their time at the dock. As scallops grow scarce, state fisheries regulations continue to shrink the number of days fishermen are allowed to spend at sea.
At the same time, these scallop boats aren’t currently suited to do much else, since other fisheries, like the groundfish industry, have little room to grow, either.
“Essentially, the scallop fleet has become panda bears,” Davis said. “They’re overspecialized.”
With no guaranteed scallop comeback on the horizon, part of CFF’s work is to look for species that could become the new sea scallop — or at least something close. Hence, Alves’ trunk full of moon snails.
But the other part is to see if these boats can be converted to research vessels in their off time, providing scallopers an alternative source of income and allowing researchers to study marine life and oceanographic patterns.
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Traditional research vessels, also known as “white boats,” are aging, expensive, and difficult to book, Patel explained. The cost of just one trip reservation can run around $15,000, largely due to the specialized equipment needed on an accredited research boat.
“Scallop boats are already going out to sea anyway,” Patel said.
And while the average crew size on a research vessel is around 50 people, a scallop trawler can be run by just three crew members, Patel added.
Patel and his team are working on new sensors and data-gathering tools designed for scallop boats, to be used by both fishermen and scientists. One tool, the SONDE, can measure ocean temperature, depth, conductivity, oxygen levels, and other oceanographic data — and deliver that information to users regardless of scientific expertise. This data can help fishermen find the ideal conditions for their catch and give scientists a bigger picture of how the Atlantic is changing.
Another tool, CFF’s fish board, might make it easier for fishermen and state observers to record their catches. Currently, observers have to record all catches by hand on pen and paper, entering the information into an online system only after they’ve returned to dry land. The fish board prototype, resembling a much higher-tech butcher’s block, is designed to allow fishermen to measure and record catches in real time by uploading data wirelessly to a “deck box” on land.
CFF received funding to test the new hardware on 45 scallop boats, although researchers expect in the next year or so that number will grow.
“We’re trying to make these tools essentially hands-off, so fishermen don’t have to worry about recording data, how it works,” larval biologist Andrew Corso said. “Everything just syncs with the deck box, and it’s very easy and straightforward to use.”
The scallop industry already encourages collaborative research trips between scientists and fishermen through the Scallop Research Set-Aside Program. But Corso hopes these tools, still in their early design stages, can better bridge the gap between scientists’ knowledge and the knowledge fishermen naturally gather from years at sea.
“It’s a really big win-win,” Corso said.
Moon snails
Other projects, like research biologist Ryan Munnelly’s moon snail project, help leverage what scallop trawlers already do best — catch things.
The northern moon snail, often caught accidentally in scallop trawlers, isn’t widely studied. It was only through the Coonamessett Farm Foundation’s own HabCam survey that researchers began to suspect that the round, pearlescent mollusk, about four to five inches wide, may regularly feed on sea scallops.
“On one of the videos, we saw a pinkish blob come into the frame and we were like, ‘What is that?!’ and it grabs a sea scallop and drags it away,” Munnelly said. “It was one of the first times we’ve seen a moon snail predate on a sea scallop.”
Unlike other predatory snails, moon snails don’t leave a drill hole on scallop shells, so there’s no definitive way to tell if they are attacking scallops, Munnelly said. Still, Munnelly and his fishermen collaborators hope to find a use for these mollusks, perhaps on New Englanders’ dinner plates.
But how do they taste?
“They’re very sweet,” research biologist Tasha O’Hara said. “Like, sugary sweet. They’re really interesting.”
In November, the Coonamessett Farm Foundation held a tasting at the Moby Dick Brewing Co. in New Bedford for chefs to share their experiments with moon snails and other less-marketed species. Menu items included Bohemian moon snail chowder and neon flying squid ceviche.
Although it’s not CFF’s job necessarily to market moon snails to the public, events like these help Munnelly and Alves steer their research in the right direction. For instance, Alves learned that moon snails caught in the winter may be tougher than snails caught in the summer, informing when fishermen might set the fishing season.
Snail mucin is also a popular ingredient in overseas skincare products, but could moon snails fill that role?
“It’s complicated because moon snails have to be scared or stimulated into producing mucus,” Davis said. “But that’s not entirely outside our realm.”
Flying squid
Where U.S. palates balk, international markets may pick up the slack. Asian consumers may take a liking to moon snails, as well as to another species of interest: the neon flying squid.
The larger, offshore squid species gets its name from the way the squid breaches the water to escape predators and can change color a bit like an octopus. Females can grow to two to three feet long, while males typically come in at a little under a foot and a half.
Although the Atlantic is home to many species of squid, U.S. fishermen only tend to fish for one kind, the Atlantic longfin inshore squid. Unlike the neon flying squid, most of the inshore squid is found closer to the coast and caught in trawlers, Patel explained, which can damage fishermen’s catch.
In Japan, the commercial demand for over 30 varieties of squid — found in more treacherous waters than those in the U.S. — has led to more advanced squid fishing, or jigging, technology. At its core, a jig is a barb that hooks a squid, leaving it mostly intact. Japanese jigging machines use hundreds of jigs mounted on one box-like frame with software to control when the jig goes into the water, how deep, and for how long.
Unlike the moon snail, which has no established market, the neon flying squid is the No. 1 squid consumed in Japan. Patel and his team are working to see if that same technology can work on New England’s scallop boats to deliver neon flying squid to the Japanese market. In November 2024, the team and Charlie Quinn of Quinn Fisheries went on a knowledge exchange trip to Japan to see the squid jigs for themselves.
The team is also experimenting with lamps that attract squid to the surface, much like a moth to flame.
“We’re luring them in with light, so you don’t need to bait the jigs,” Patel said. “You don’t need to use other animals to catch another animal.”
Starfish milk
Another Japanese technology Patel hopes to adopt is the starfish mop, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Starfish are a well-known predator to sea scallops, so much so that Japanese fisheries work to remove starfish from their waters. They do so with the help of giant mops, which grab the starfish like velcro before dropping the starfish into vats of boiling water.
Although simple in concept, recreating these mops has proven difficult. The Japanese mops use a high density of hemp or cotton strands to ensure that they stay plush under water.
“Theirs is like a shaggy dog, and ours is nowhere close,” Patel said.
Once the starfish are caught, removing them is an entirely different challenge. Not wanting to keep vats of boiling water on board or waste manpower removing the starfish by hand, CFF researchers are looking into pressure-washing the starfish off the mops.
And what do you do once you’ve caught a starfish? You milk it.
The CFF has partnered with researchers in Canada interested in harvesting starfish for their “milk.” This “milk,” which is really the starfish’s coelomic fluid, may have cosmetic applications similar to the anti-aging effects of retinol. Starfish milk is also a known spermicide.
“We can only take things so far and someone else will have to pick it up from there,” Patel said.
Although these projects sit on the edge of the mainstream, they seek to combat an unfortunate reality for scallop fishermen. Regional fisheries are becoming more and more dependent on just one species, hurting both that species’ chance of survival and fishermen’s livelihoods. New fisheries — whether they be moon snails or starfish — are essential to keeping New Bedford’s fishing port from going the way of whaling, Davis said.
“New Bedford was rebuilt in many ways by the scallop fishery,” Davis said, pointing to the city’s crop of boat builders, fish houses, and cold storage facilities. “If the fishery collapses, those businesses are going under.”
Email Brooke Kushwaha at bkushwaha@newbedfordlight.org.
More stories by Brooke Kushwaha
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