At the Troubled Shellfish Hatchery, Good Work Depends on Good Water

By JULIA WELLS

This place runs on water.

Filtered salt water fortified with home-grown algae to feed the baby
shellfish. Pure pond water pumped straight from the Lagoon to feed the
adolescent shellfish. Fresh water pumped straight from a well to keep
everything - as Eloise's aunt would say - clean,
clean, clean.

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It is early Saturday morning and the solar hatchery owned by the
Martha's Vineyard Shellfish Group is infused with the sound of
water.

Inside the hatchery, downstairs, water pulses through clear plastic
tubing and cascades softly through cloth bags suspended above trays of
young scallops and oysters. Upstairs water bubbles in tall plastic
cylinders that are used to grow nutritious algae for the shellfish.
Outside, just a few steps down the bank, the water of the Lagoon laps
gently against the shore and swirls in small eddies around a pier that
has grown somewhat ramshackle with use over the years. Alongside the
pier a shallow wire cage bobs in the water; the cage contains a
scattering of mature scallops.

These are the brood stock.

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Inside the hatchery, shallow round trays sit in large rectangular
tables. The round trays hold scallops so tiny they appear to be nothing
more than grains of sand.

These are the survivors.

This month the hatchery lost four million healthy scallops and
oysters that were under culture at the hatchery. The direct cause of the
shellfish death is not known, but biologists say they are certain that
the kill is linked to deteriorating water quality in the Lagoon. Last
week Mr. Karney went public with the news about the die-off and said
bluntly that unless something is done soon, the future of the hatchery
program is in jeopardy.

Tucked into a leafy glade midway up the western shore of the Lagoon
on the Vineyard Haven side, the hatchery is an unprepossessing place.
Built in the 1970s when government grant money flowed for solar projects
in the midst of the national energy crisis, it is at once humble and
sturdy and includes a pair of simple wood-frame structures, their
steeply pitched solar roofs facing the pond. The smaller building was
put up first as an experimental hatchery in 1978. The larger one was
built in 1981. Outside the hatchery, shallow rectangular cages fashioned
from wire mesh and PVC fittings are stacked 10 deep beneath the summer
canopy of scrub oak and pitch pine. Called spawning sanctuaries, the
cages are used to protect young cultured shellfish from predators.
Nearby, net bags of oyster cultch form a long wind row.

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These are the tools of shellfish farming.

Like all forms of agriculture, farming the sea knows no holidays or
weekends, because there is work to be done every day. Today, while
vacationers on the Vineyard are still rubbing sleep from their eyes and
finding that first cup of coffee, Mr. Karney is in the hatchery. All the
trays of shellfish must be rinsed and the water must be changed in the
large upstairs tanks that contain freshly spawned triploid oysters and
scallops.

The triploids are part of an experimental growth trial program at
the hatchery to test the health and marketability of oysters and
scallops bred with an extra chromosome. The extra chromosome makes the
shellfish sterile, which improves marketability for oysters (the oyster
meat becomes soft during spawning) and also disease resistant (shellfish
are in a weakened state and more susceptible to disease after spawning).
The scallops and oysters are bred by crossing patented tetraploid stock,
obtained from a marine science program at Rutgers University, with
native diploid stock. The result is a triploid.

Shellfishermen from Edgartown to Long Island will participate in the
growth trial, which is partially funded by a grant from the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. But the recent die-off at the hatchery was a
major setback for the growth trial, because the shellfish under culture
were well on their way to young adult stage.

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Time to start over. Today Mr. Karney attends to a large tank with
millions of freshly spawned triploid oysters and scallops. Dawn Hintgen,
a college student who works at the hatchery, helps out. Tanks are
drained, shellfish are sieved and rinsed with salt water, tanks are
refilled, shellfish are fed. There is a certain rhythm to it all, and
Mr. Karney, the veteran marine biologist who has directed the hatchery
for nearly three decades, is the choreographer. The sound of bubbling
water forms a kind of background music.

There is time for conversation.

The pond is becoming eutrophic, he says, a bad condition for
shellfish and other forms of marine life. "A eutrophic pond is
unbalanced. This pond is not dead, but it is definitely having
strokes," Mr. Karney says.

Water testing done last week and again yesterday found anoxic
conditions in deep water holes in the Lagoon. Anoxia is a condition
known among scientists as "dead water" because the oxygen
levels are so low they cannot sustain marine life.

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"Anoxia is really bad. That's the stuff they are finding
in the Gulf of Mexico where the fish are going belly-up," Mr.
Karney says.

Amandine Surier, a hatchery biologist and assistant manager, arrives
from her morning work at the satellite hatchery on Chappaquiddick.

It's been a tough year for the shellfish group, a year marked
by a hard winter with so much snow and ice that spawning was delayed by
a month. Then later there was a spate of equipment breakdowns.

Today Mr. Karney frets about the main water pump; he doesn't
like the sound of it. He is a one-man band, functioning as not only the
leading biologist but also the maintenance man and the administrator.

But today the sun is out and last week's anguish over the loss
of millions of shellfish seed appears to have abated just a little.

"It's like a curse; Amandine wants to get Luther Madison
[the medicine man for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head] over here to burn
some sage," Mr. Karney says, a grin flickering across his face.

Amandine is all business, her eyes trained on a microscope. It is
time to count the triploid oysters. Waders hang from hooks nearby. An
old bumper sticker is pasted to the wall. The slogan says: "I love
clams," a red heart serving as a stand-in for the word love.

Mr. Karney leans over and sniffs a tray as he rinses.
"It's a little sour," he says, his nose wrinkling.
"It should have a nice fresh smell." A visitor is invited to
join the olfactory test, but cannot detect any odor.

More rinsing ensues.

In the air there a faint smell of iodine, which is used to disinfect
the trays. It is about the strongest chemical used at the hatchery,
where no harsh chemicals and no antibiotics are used, ever.

Amandine scribbles the count on a piece of paper: 4.8 million
triploids. In the control group [diploids bred from the wild] the count
is higher: 6 million.

"Okay, that's good, knock on wood," Mr. Karney
says, tapping his head with a knuckle.

Suddenly it is lunchtime and the morning farm chores are done. Like
the July sun glinting off the surface of the pond, Mr. Karney reflects.

"We love what we do here, it's good work," he
says. "But we depend on the Lagoon."