Town Hall 24 Perry Avenue Buzzards Bay, MA 02532-3441 508-759-0600 Hours of Operation: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM Monday - Friday Excluding Holidays
The following area is closed to all shellfishing for the purposes of management & propagation & shall remain closed until further notice:
Mashnee Dike The waters of that portion of Mashnee Dike from the "No Shellfishing" sign located at the end of the access path on the northerly end of the dike, extending approximately 1,100 feet to the "No Shellfishing" sign located at the end of the access path at the southerly end of the dike. This closure will also extend seaward to the floating shellfish markers located approximately 150 feet off shore.
=->MAP<-=
One of the upwellers is put in place by DNR personnel.
...and ready to go. Water trough & pump are in the middle, bays where silos will go are to the left & right.
DNR employee attaches silos to the trough.
...easily fit in the palm of your hand.
...easily fit on the tip of your finger. In reality, you could put dozens there.
This is about a quarter of a million quahaug seed, ready to be placed in trays in the silos.
Which is done gently, so as not to crush the shells.
There has been visible growth in the 3 weeks since the seed was placed in the upweller.
Oyster seed grows MUCH faster and is more apparent in its' growth than any other shellfish species.
What started out as "grains of sand" at the bottom of the silos has now been put into trays that go to the top of the silos.
By this time, many of the oysters measure in the 1-1.5 inch range.
Because of their quick growth & taking up excessive space in the upwellers, oysters are planted 1-2 months before quahaugs.
This is the seed at approximately 16 weeks and shortly before planting.
This gives you a better idea of how big the seed is when we finally put it out on the shellfish beds at the end of the growing season.
Here the seed is loaded onto our work skiff in the silo trays and ready to throw out onto the shellfish beds.
We paint some of the see fluorescent orange, so we can try to keep track of the seed, how well it survived, and the growth rates over the coming years.
Here we're measuring the seed and comparing growth rates in different areas.
And you can see where that orange paint comes in real handy.
And you can see that it resulted in VERY good growth over a year's time.
For different batches of seed and different areas. So now when you see those "colored quahaugs" out there, you'll know why.
Oysters we don't have to paint. The definite growth since being placed in the water can easily be seen - Light vs. dark shell & a definite "ridge" in the shell growth. The one on the right is almost legal size (3 inches).
This site has been tested & verified with the latest versions of the Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome & Microsoft Internet Explorer web browsers; all with the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. The Operating Systems used included Linux, Mac (OS X) and Windows XP & Vista. We recommend that software updates be done on a regular basis to keep your computer in peak operating condition and avoid any issues. While the web site may work with older versions of software or other browsers or Operating Systems, we cannot be responsible for ensuring that it does.
Mac Users: Please be aware that there have been some definite, wide spread issues with the various versions of the Safari web browser and it is not recommended for this site or attempting to read PDF packaged files. Firefox and Adobe Reader should be used for a successful web bowsing experience.