“With reports suggesting more red tide blooms, it is important that we fund the efforts of top scientists to develop early warnings of seasonal outbreaks,” Delahunt said today. “The health of New England’s waters is vital to the economic prosperity of coastal communities and our shellfish industry, which is why I am very pleased to see NOAA provide this funding.”
The Gulf of Maine Toxicity project is a regional observation and modeling program focused on red tide bloom events in the outer Gulf of Maine and adjacent New England shelf waters. The resulting information and relevant technologies will provide for progress toward a bloom forecasting system. Research results will be used to help managers, regulators, and industry to fully and safely exploit near shore and offshore shellfish resources threatened by red tide toxins.
Dr. Don Anderson, Senior Scientist at WHOI said, "Sustained funding from NOAA has allowed us to obtain data on large-scale red tide blooms in the Gulf of Maine and to use that information to develop and calibrate a state-of-the-art computer model that we can now use to help manage these devastating phenomena. We use these models to look backwards to understand past outbreaks, and are now able to look forward as well to provide seasonal outlooks that help managers and the shellfish industry better anticipate the challenges that they may encounter this spring and summer."
Delahunt has also sponsored legislation in the House that would establish and maintain a National Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Program to develop a national strategy to address marine and freshwater harmful algal bloom and hypoxia events. In recent testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee, Delahunt stated that in 2005 “in Massachusetts alone, the red tide impacted over 2,000 commercial shellfishermen and over 250 shellfish aquaculture grants, resulting in economic damages exceeding $35 million dollars. Again in 2008, Massachusetts waters suffered another massive and unanticipated red tide bloom, forcing an infusion of federal commercial fishery disaster aid to prevent the collapse of the local industry. This summer, Maine waters were affected and the economic losses to this region were estimated in the millions of dollars.
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