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Regional Topics

Regional Topics Woods Hole Sea Grant (WHSG) works within an ocean and coastal environment that strongly influences the state’s economy, culture, and residents. Since its inception, WHSG has provided scientific research, outreach, communication and education to Massachusetts’s coastal residents. WHSG-supported researchers are at the scientific foreground, and WHSG works actively with communities, coastal managers, and…

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Enjoying Oysters Safely in Massachusetts

Each year, millions of fresh raw oysters are consumed in Massachusetts, most of them in the warm summer months. During that time, aquaculturists in the Commonwealth take extra precautions to safeguard their harvests from the heat, include icing oysters at the time of harvest – a step that can double or triple the weight of…

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Mapping Katama Bay’s Restless Sands

Boaters on Martha’s Vineyard know navigational maps of Katama Bay become obsolete very quickly. Why do the sands at the bottom of the Bay shift so much and so often? Katama Bay has two inlets. Water pours in from Vineyard Sound through Edgartown Channel, and from the Atlantic Ocean through Katama Inlet. The size and…

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Shellfish

Shellfish Research » Identification of the cause of hemic neoplasia in Mercenaria mercenaria and development of management methods NRAC-USDA Fall 2017 – Fall 2019 » Market Development to Diversify Shellfish Aquaculture Products in Massachusetts NOAA SG Aquaculture Initiative: Addressing Impediments to Aqua. Opportunities Sept. 2017 – Sept. 2019​ » Piloting surf clam aquaculture techniques to…

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The Little Fish with a Big Impact

In the Gulf of Maine, there’s a little eel-like fish not much bigger than a large pencil, that buries itself in the sand in the summer and swims up and down in the water column in the spring and fall. It’s called a sand lance and it’s incredibly important to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine. If you like whale watching, this little fish is the biggest reason you might or might not see a whale:

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2006-2008 Projects

Seasonal Changes in Groundwater Flow Into the Coastal Ocean Fresh water from water tables under the land flows out into the coastal ocean from beneath the seabed, a flow known as submarine groundwater discharge (SGD). Researchers have found that such flow can have a very large impact on estuaries. Groundwater carries land-generated nitrogen compounds, plus…

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