COPING WITH RED TIDE

With $20 million in federal disaster assistance perhaps headed to New England shellfish harvesters and red tide already forcing closures of harvesting areas in Maine, some of the relief money should be used for more than compensating those who lost money last year.

As the Department of Marine Resources intends, the money should be used for additional research and sampling to minimize the impact of red tide outbreaks, which are inevitable and likely to get worse because of climate change.

The Senate this week approved a supplemental spending bill, mostly for the war in Iraq, that included $20 million in disaster assistance for shellfish harvesters affected by last year’s red tide outbreak, the worst in 30 years. The money is not included in the House version of the bill and President Bush has threatened to veto a bill that exceeds $94 billion in spending, which the Senate version does. So, the $20 million is not assured.

The algae known as red tide grow in large blooms about 30 to 60 miles off the coast of New England. Two factors determine whether an unusual outbreak will occur. If there are lots of nutrients in this area, the bloom is likely to be large. Second, strong currents are needed to carry the algae, which are toxic to humans, closer to shore where the are ingested by shellfish such as clams and mussels.

Last year, the offshore bloom was not especially large, but an unusual succession of four storms with winds from the Northeast carried the red tide close to shore as far south as Cape Cod, where it is not usually found.

Officials in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts put especially large areas of the coast off-limits to shellfish harvesting. The Small Business Administration declared an economic disaster and the Department of Commerce declared a fisheries failure.

This year, it appears the offshore bloom will be large. What can’t be predicted more than a few days in advance is whether storms will bring the algae to shore. Last week, however, Maine did have a storm with northeast winds, red tide appeared off Harpswell and DMR closed a portion of the coast to some harvesting.

Rather than using all of the money it may get from the federal government to compensate harvesters for their losses, the DMR rightly envisions using some of the funds for research and sampling. More sampling means the department can be more specific in closing areas rather than putting large swaths of the coast off-limits.

This would minimize the economic harm to harvesters. Areas for research include looking for ways to remove the toxins from shellfish akin to the process used to eliminate bacteria.

Red tide isn’t going away, and may worsen, so funding efforts to minimize its impacts is a wise investment.