Title : Growing up with climate change: From childhood curiosity to teaching future farmers of the sea
Abstract:
Growing up on the Connecticut coast (USA) in the 1960s came at the end of a long period of cold. In 1965, Long Island Sound froze over as far as the eye could see; it hasn’t frozen over again. Harry Van Loon living in Copenhagen described his experiences in a 2005 interview as being born at one end of the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) and living 26 years “at its receiving end.” The NAO has obtained much recent interest as it relates to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).
The New England winters in the 1950s were frequently cold and storm filled. Although Connecticut has a rich shellfish history of producing oysters, Crassostrea virginica and the hard clam, Mercenaria mercenaria (quahog), these industries reached their highest production in the 1890s. Storms in central and eastern Connecticut caused shellfish in open high energy areas to be cast up onto beaches in the coastal town of Madison, Connecticut. My brother, Raymond, and I noticed these clams and oysters washed up along Hammonasset Beach State Park, a coastal public park near our home. We saw these stranded shellfish as an opportunity to keep them alive in Tom’s Creek, a small tidal creek. In the summers, we would check to see if they lived and could see them grow. I was 12 years old, and my brother was 10 years old.
In time, Tom’s Creek became an oyster and clam farm in a small business in which we sold shucked oysters and large adult clams for chowder. We planted shells for oyster spats and noticed that our raking kept the soil loose and suitable for clam sets despite the presence of the green crabs, Circinus maenas, which lived in Tom’s Creek as well. Fresh water discharge kept the starfish, Asterias forbesi, and oyster drill snail, Urosalpinx cinerea, out of Tom’s Creek.
However, as the waters warmed, the shellfish in Tom’s Creek perished; harmful algal blooms, sulfate bacteria, sulfide, brown tides, oyster and clam disease, including MSX and vibrio infections soon ended our small shellfish venture. A more detailed description of shellfish habitat loss can be found in Neil Berro’s manuscript about oysters titled “Oyster Haven Lost” (2024).
There was a huge gap between the observations of shallow water habitats of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Cape Cod, Massachusetts (USA) and the scientific literature. This gap was magnified by shallow water warming, a shift in soil bacteria, clam and oyster diseases and organisms that could not survive in the colder waters of the 1960s.
The end of the shallow water habitats created a desire to bridge habitat observations to specialized science laboratories for grades 9-12. This practical application of industry equipment at a secondary school level is the cornerstone of a century-old agriculture education. Today, we recognize vocational agriculture education and its student association, FFA (formerly known as the Future Farmers of America). At these new aquaculture education centers labs for biotech, toxicology, pathology and bacteriology would exist, the sciences needed for future aquaculture industries.
In Connecticut, the Bridgeport Aquaculture Center completed a $40 million (USD)/30,000 square foot (2,787 square meters) expansion in 2010 after the original $8 million (USD) build in 1990. The Sound School Aquaculture Center in New Haven, opened in 2003 as a $38 million (USD) and later updated its Fish Production laboratory in 2023. Hundreds of people helped make these aquaculture education centers a reality. Combined, to date, these two centers represent 65 program years of education much needed for future farmers of the sea.
