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Red tide puts a drain on Wellfleet’s economy
By Ann Wood & Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
WELLFLEET — The red tide could put the town’s economy in the red this year — and not just for shellfishermen. Michael May, assistant harbormaster and selectman, said that the marina is fielding calls from people who are unduly afraid to boat, swim or even breath in the sea air — all because of the presence of red tide algae.
“We’ve gotten some very strange calls. They’re afraid,” he said Monday. “This is going to be far reaching because, you know, the restaurant people [may lose their jobs].”
May is speaking of those typically employed to shuck clams and oysters at raw bars in the summer — if raw shellfish is sold, it now has to be imported at a higher cost and different taste, or raw bars may be shut down.
Wellfleet has the largest aquaculture, or shellfish farming, industry in the state. Aquaculture brought around $3.6 million into town in 2002. The presence of the red tide, which hasn’t happened since 1972, closed shellfish beds from Provincetown to Sandwich on May 26.
“There’s no end in sight so far,” said Wellfleet Shellfish Constable Andy Koch. “I think that we’ve got red tide bad in the bay right now but we have an 11- or 12-foot tide and a better flush [than Chatham, and] I think once it starts subsiding it will get out of here quick. But it’s not subsiding so far. If anything, it’s still growing.”
The red tide, an algae known as Alexandrium, can be poisonous to humans who consume hard shell clams, soft shell clams, oysters, mussels or scallops, because those animals feed by filtering microscopic food out of the water.
While some are skeptical about eating striped bass and other fish caught in the area, Dave Whittaker, biologist with the Mass. Div. of Marine Fisheries, says the part of the fish we eat, the muscle, is not affected by the red tide, so there is nothing to worry about. However, the toxin can affect whales and seabirds because they ingest the whole fish, soft tissue and all.
Over the weekend he said that closures included all of Chatham, all of Nantucket and all of the central part of Nantucket Sound. Samples from Martha's Vineyard were taken and results are pending within the next few days.
State Sen. Rob O’Leary talked to the Banner Tuesday about a press release he issued that morning urging Gov. Mitt Romney to get the Federal Emergency Management Agency involved in helping those affected by the red tide. Although O’Leary says it would be a “unique situation” for FEMA, which typically doles out financial aid to help repair permanent damage, he thinks it could help.
“My first instinct is to go [to FEMA] and we’re all learning as we’re going along here,” O’Leary said. “FEMA might have some ideas of where we should be going. I’m just trying to follow this and see what we can do.”
Although shellfish should not be eaten, Koch says that swimming, boating and breathing the air on Cape Cod are all safe. But he knows where that red-tide worry comes from.
“I go down to Florida every winter and there’s red tide down there and the toxins actually get in the air,” he said. “I just read yesterday that this is a totally different type of red tide [that doesn’t become airborne].”
Whittaker said he could not predict when the restriction on shellfishing would be lifted, but pointed out that the shellfish have to show three descending levels of toxin before they're declared safe again. The threshold at which they're considered dangerous is 80 micrograms of toxin per 100 grams of shellfish meat, Whittaker said, so once the meat samples come in under 80, they have to prove two more times through testing that the toxin levels are still going down.
“It’s so high it’s not going to go away overnight,” Koch said, adding that when water toxins are down, the shellfish will clean themselves. “It might take a week or so of them pumping to get clean.”
awood@provincetownbanner.com
klum@provincetownbanner.com
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Local fishermen aim to reclaim sea clam fishery
In the News
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Jun 9th, 2005